


covenant

by ironicpotential, TaFuilLiom



Series: covenant [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-03-09 08:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18913429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: She could see the flames glimmering against the tears in Maggie’s eyes, smell the scorching soil under her feet. If they were going to burn, it was together."I’ll see you in the next one, Danvers."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An idea that spiralled; what if there was a version of Maggie and Alex who made the same decisions as Alura and Zor-El?

A chest rises and falls in time with the steady rhythm of the heart monitor. The girl lies on the medical gurney, curled around a stuffed otter. She can’t be older than five years old, and in her slumber, is unaware that she’s in the DEO. 

With a sigh, Alex pulls the standard military issue cover over her shoulders. The powder blue blanket drowns the tiny sleeping frame. She lingers for a moment, watching the girl’s brow twitch in sleep, then turns back to her workstation.

The alert that had sounded hours earlier had shaken her to her core. Brainy’s systems detected an unidentified object travelling between worlds, ripping open a portal near the south entrance to Belmont Park. It was a busy afternoon, and even though the DEO squad had raced there, dozens of civilians had gotten eyes on it.

Honestly, she’s still having trouble wrapping her head around what had happened. This was a common scenario that they had protocols and contingency plans for— they’re no strangers to Barry Allen’s poorly timed interdimensional escapades now— but the origin of the object was unclear.

Alex hadn’t been in the field since J’onn had bestowed upon her the title of DEO Director, and her trigger finger had itched with the urge to be fighting by Kara’s side once more, so she found herself strapping on her tactical gear. If the unidentified object turned out to be dangerous, they’d need their best agent to contain it in a populated city park. 

They had approached the still-smoking crater armed to the teeth, but what they found wasn’t hostile— at least not straightaway. All that was there was a silver pod, much like the one Kara had crash-landed in all those years ago.

She’d signaled the task force to stand down as she pried off the top. Once she registered what was inside, she immediately holstered her own weapon. Here was a girl in a deep sleep— the same girl she’s running tests on now.

Her initial suspicion was that the child was Kryptonian, or Daxamite, judging by the style of the pod and the humanoid appearance, but that hypothesis had been debunked the minute the collection needle easily slipped past her skin and straight into a vein. The girl is human. The first blood test had confirmed that. Now there is just the matter of determining the origin of her craft so they can send her back to her own Earth.  

A whimper draws her attention back to her patient, whose brow crinkles as she presses her nose further into the fur of her stuffed companion. Alex scoots her chair back over towards her young charge, glad that she’d had the foresight to pull the toy from the wreckage of the girl’s craft before sending it to Brainy for analysis.  

The girl whimpers once more, seemingly lost in a nightmare, and Alex reaches out to her without thinking, running her hand along the girl’s back. Maybe it is the similarity in the pods, but she remembers tiptoeing out of bed to do the same thing for a younger Kara when she was first adjusting to Earth. 

It’s also what her father used to do when she would wake up crying as a child. What Maggie used to do when she would be thrown from sleep at three am, covered in sweat and gasping for breath.

Nightmares tug her stream of consciousness away even further. Ever since the tank, her sleep has been restless, but last night, she hadn’t dreamt of the chill of the water surrounding her or the feeling of her lungs burning. 

Instead she dreamt of fire.

_ Her world was burning. _

_ Their neighbours fled their houses, arms laden with trinkets and treasures, even though they all knew that there was really nowhere to run. Their fate was sealed. _

_ It was an otherworldly scene. Meteorites rained down from the sky, turned a bright orange from the smoke particles rising through the air. She could feel the heat licking at her skin, could hear the screaming all around her, and then… a voice rising above the din. _

_ “We did the right thing.” _

_ It was her voice, her tongue like sandpaper against the roof of the mouth, parched by the heat. _

_ “We did. She’s safe.” The image of Maggie swam in front of her, solidifying until she was standing before her. Sweat slicked their hair to their temples. “We did the right thing.” _

_ She reached out, fingers brushing Maggie’s cheek, sliding through the damp perspiration. She wanted to be closer. Needed to be closer. _

_ “I love you, so much. Forever.” _

_ She could see the flames glimmering against the tears in Maggie’s eyes, smell the scorching soil under her feet. If they were going to burn, it was together. _

_ “I’ll see you in the next one, Danvers-” _

The girl stirs, reaching out for Alex, grasping at the lapels of her lab coat and mumbling something that sends a shockwave coursing through her.  _ Mommy _ . 

It must be a mistake. Just a young child, half-asleep, trying to find some kind of comfort in a strange land. 

She lifts herself away and moves back to her workstation. She tries to dislodge the grip on her throat that comes with remembering Maggie in any way, even if it is in a cryptic dream. 

But that dream...

Why, after so many months of crying into Kara’s shoulder at sister nights, of the string of first dates, of  _ finally _ thinking that she could move on with her life, is she dreaming about Maggie? Moreover, why is she dreaming about them dying in flames, in a world on fire?

It had seemed too real. Too vivid. She just can’t shake the feeling like there’s something more to it. It’s like she’s staring at a puzzle with a missing final piece. 

The door to the Medical Bay swings open and Brainy appears, a flashdrive in hand. “Director Danvers, I’ve come across some video files while gathering data from the pod that was recovered.”

“Excellent work.” She takes the offered drive and stands, her joints cracking from being hunched over for so long. “Please keep me updated.”

He gives her a curt nod and disappears once more. Her patient has gone back to sleep, so she flicks half of the lights off and retreats across the hall to the small office adjacent to her lab— the one she refused to give up, even when offered the use of J’onn’s larger one on the main level. She loads the first file on her computer and nearly gasps when the image fills the screen.

It’s her. 

It’s her and-

Her doppelganger is sitting next to Maggie, her hand on the other woman’s knee. They’re sitting calmly, but the way the other Alex’s voice cracks when she speaks tells her that they’re struggling not to cry.

_ “You’re probably wondering what the hell you’re looking at...Well…” Alex waves at the pair of them. “About six months ago we got readings that our sun was acting erratically, sending out bursts of solar energy. We were getting scorching heat waves, and the climate destabilised and...anyway, we did all we could, as a planet I mean, but…” _

_ “But there’s nothing else we can do. Except wait it out.” Maggie finishes. _

_ Alex nods resolutely. “Right. So here’s the thing…” _

_ Maggie takes her hand, squeezing her fingers. “We know this is a lot to ask, but Jamie - uh, our daughter, she’s just a kid. She’s four years old.” _

_ “She deserves to live a full, happy life. She doesn’t deserve to die with us—” _

_ Caught up in that bombshell statement, they pause to share a look that is equal parts hope and anguish, then Alex clears her throat and looks directly at the camera. _

_ “So we’re sending her to you.” _

_ Maggie leans in closer to Alex, winding an arm around her waist. “Please, please love her. Care for her. She deserves a chance. Love her as much as we do.” _

_ “That’s all we ask, please. Because we can’t, not with the world about to...to end.” _

The video cuts to black. Maggie and her double disappear, leaving the room with only the hum of the computer. Alex stares at her own reflection in the black monitor. If the video she just watched is real, this child— the child that is lying in her lab on a medical bed— is hers.

Hers and Maggie’s.

She lurches back in her seat, her mind ablaze with questions. She reaches up to the collar of her suit, toying with it, as if it were choking her. 

Was the child genetically related to them? Did that technology even exist on their Earth? How could she even confirm that?

With each one she becomes more distant; each question a step away from reality and into deafening shock.

Leaving her office, she runs right into Brainy in the hall. She stumbles back, the shock scattering her attention away from him and at a thousand trivial details. The quiffed style of his hair, the blinkered light overhead that needs urgent fixing, the colour of Agent Travers’ laces not being DEO uniform protocol-

She can’t get a grip on reality. Not with-

“I found something quite strange.” He pokes at the data pad in his hand, trying to draw her focus. “The origin point of the portal jump is no longer fixed. It was 5 years into the future and on a separate timeline to ours, but now it appears to no longer exist.”

5 years into the future. A separate timeline. A fixed origin point that no longer physically exists. 

Hellfire raining down, scorching the Earth; her dream becoming reality. Alex swallows the lump in her throat, pushing past him. “That’s because it doesn’t.”

She stops in front of the Medical Bay window and peers through the glass. Brainy hands her the datapad wordlessly, hovering for a few seconds longer, before turning and marching off. 

Numb, she looks down at the datapad and flicks through various reports, but she’s not really taking in any of the information. She’s too distracted by the fact that the girl now sitting up on the gurney could presumably share 50 percent of her DNA. 

(And 50 percent of Maggie’s, but she isn’t ready to deal with that right now).

The girl—  _ Jamie _ , she corrects herself— is awake and chattering to her stuffed otter, and if Alex leans close enough to the glass, she can just about make out what she’s saying.

“No one will talk to me,” Jamie laments. She looks around the space, and whispers, “I think they’re mad at me, but I don’t know what I did wrong.” She dances the otter this way and that, and then cradles him close to her chest. She lets out a big sigh, rubbing her cheek on his head. “What did I do, Pickles?”

Alex’s heart seizes, and then stutters back into a normal rhythm. Jamie doesn’t seem perturbed by the fact that she’s in the DEO, which only provides more evidence that the claims made in that video were true. She’s used to being there because she spends time there with her mom. With  _ her. _

When Alex had carried an unconscious Jamie into the Medical Bay, she’d told the other agents to keep clear of the area, but now she thinks that may have not been the best idea. Jamie knows these agents on her Earth.

_ This girl is her daughter. _

_ This girl-  _

Alex’s train of thought is delivering her realisation after realisation, putting together connections she didn’t know she should have been looking for. She presses a palm against the glass of the Medical Bay, leaning into it like each revelation is sapping her of strength. 

This is the reason Jamie expects the other agents to talk to her, the reason she called out _ Mommy _ when she stirred, the reason she recognises the girl’s features… she’s  _ hers. _

A voice floats in from her right, announcing an arrival, “I heard there was a…” 

Kara stops dead in her tracks as she catches sight of the girl on the medical table. “Oh, she’s adorable!”

Alex pries her hand off the glass, seeing the smudges left by her fingerprints. She can see her sister smiling in her peripheral vision. Supergirl had been in Gotham helping a colleague and hadn’t been there for the alert, but when Alex had notified her that the pod appeared to be Kryptonian in origin, she’d come rushing back. 

She’d known it was a longshot that there was another survivor of Krypton, but still, Alex thought it was her duty to inform Kara there was even a chance. 

She had been  _ so _ far off the mark. 

“Kara,” Alex says, shuffling some money out of her wallet, “I need you to go to the store and get some stuff for this kid. Food, pyjamas, clothes, anything you can think of. Take it to my apartment.”

Kara looks a little blankly at the money, then takes it. “You’re taking her out of here?”

“Yeah.”

She has to. The Alex and Maggie from that doomed Earth had sent their daughter to her because they believed that she would protect her and care for her. She owes it to them and to Jamie to step up. To adjust quicker than she’s ever had to before. 

She doesn’t know how to begin, to take this first step, but she has to walk forward regardless.

She’ll have to tell Maggie somehow, but for now, Jamie needs her.

She catches Kara’s eye through her reflection on the window glass. Her sister seems baffled at Alex's curtness. “Did you find out who she is?”

“Yeah.” 

Alex’s mouth quirks up in an involuntary smile as Jamie nuzzles into Pickle’s fuzzy ear, letting herself sink back to reality, letting Kara stew for just a few seconds longer. And then-

“She’s mine.”

~

She doesn’t get a lot of visitors. She hasn’t even updated her file at the NCPD to reflect the address of her new studio apartment. It’s only been a few months since the breakup and while she may have packed her things into boxes and moved them halfway across town, making that last change feels too final.

When a knock comes to her door in the middle of an otherwise standard evening, she’s immediately curious. A neighbour? A stranger who’s lost their way? A salesman?

She hopes it’s not the latter.

Or she did, until she sees who it is through the peephole. 

Automatically, she unlocks the door and opens it, staring blankly at her visitor.

“Hey,” Alex greets her, as if the last time they spoke hadn’t been through tears.

“Hey.” Maggie nervously palms her hips, pulse racing as panic eclipses her rationale. The urge to scream builds as she takes in those doe eyes, that faint perfume. The very presence of Alex tilts the axis of her world. Yet all she musters is:  “Is everything, uh, alright?”

“Actually, no.” Alex adjusts the strap of her laptop bag, peering up through her eyelashes. “Is it okay if I come in?”

Against the warning from every fibre of her being, Maggie motions for her to enter. She knows it was inevitable that she would run into Alex sometime— the DEO and NCPD work seamlessly together, because of, and in spite of, their own partnership— but this isn’t a crime scene. It isn’t neutral territory. They aren’t playfully fighting over jurisdiction anymore. Their first interaction in months is on her own turf, and yet Maggie feels like she’s at a distinct disadvantage.

Alex has always had a way of making her feel vulnerable.

She shuts the door behind her, and is about to offer a drink, but Alex is already rummaging through her laptop case and pulling out a stack of files.

It’s business then.

“There was an incident a few days ago. Actually, over a week ago,” Alex declares, setting out neat piles of paper, “I think you have a right to know.”

“To know what?”

Alex straightens, turns, and draws her bottom lip between her teeth. “Ten days ago, an unidentified object crash-landed in National City. It’s- the pod we found- it’s not from this universe. There was a girl inside, she’s only four and well… she’s lost.”

Maggie recognises the pattern of her speech; she’s dancing around something, building up to it. She’s practised the tale over and over, that much is clear, but she’s too afraid to tell it now.

“Okay…?” Maggie prods Alex to continue, “This girl, who is she?”

“She's…” Alex chews at her lip and looks to the figures on the paperwork to ground her. She won’t look Maggie in the eye. “She’s our daughter.”

Maggie’s consciousness comes screeching to a halt. That urge to scream releases immediately into a gasp; “ _ Excuse _ me?”

“Not... _ ours _ , another version of us,” Alex clarifies, holding out a flat palm as if she’s afraid Maggie might attack her, “Of you and me. We- They had a child. And she…”

She pauses and frowns, the skin between her eyebrows crinkling as she searches for the words.

“Their planet died, like Krypton did. There was a huge solar flare from their Sun, and well, there were no survivors. Except one.”

Maggie’s shock clears all at once, like how fresh air sobers her after an hour in a bar. She knows Kara’s story, knows about Krypton. She finally realises what Alex is trying to tell her.

A planet engulfed in a hail of fire from an unstable star, desperate parents sending their child away in the hope they would have a chance at life, a different universe with people just like them.

A dying planet. Desperate parents. One survivor.

“The kid.”

Alex dips her chin in confirmation. “The kid.”

A dead planet, no parents, a lone survivor.

It’s almost a mercy, the fact that she’s so young. Maybe she would be free of the scars Maggie herself bore from losing her own home as a child. Maybe she doesn’t even know.

“The video message they left in the pod… it was dated 2024. They said sending her back in time was safer than forward or linear. I ran tests because it was crazy. I couldn’t believe it.” Alex presses her lips together, quelling the ramble, and then, “But she’s human.”

Maggie props her hands on her hips and tries to ground herself through the balls of her feet. She stretches her sternum up as if she is trying to suppress a painful stitch after a sprint, but her stomach tightens and tightens until she has to swing her hands away with the tension. She laces them together, unlaces them, wrings them, circles her wrists. 

She sees Alex eyeing her anxious idiosyncrasies, and self-consciously plants her hands back on her hips. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Alex rifles through the paperwork she’s brought, all on official DEO letterhead. Maggie recognises the layout— they’re lab tests. 

“Here,” Alex mumbles, handing out a thin bundle held together with a single paperclip. 

Maggie takes it without comment. Alex’s agent number is listed on the page, as is her own DEO identification number. She recognises it from when it had been added to the system after Hank Henshaw shot her.

Alex had to know the truth. Had to run the tests, to prove her hypothesis. These are DNA results laid out in front of her. And she’s seen enough of them in her own line of work to know what each of the matching alleles means. 

Her heart pounds. She scans the two numbers again and again, mouthing over each digit, checking that they’re correct. Her number, and Alex’s, from the DEO registry. Then the graphs, sees the matching results. Back to the numbers, to the peaks on the electropherogram.

Only when Alex speaks does the truth actually sink in. 

“She’s ours, Maggie. One hundred percent.”

Maggie doesn’t reply. The numbers and lines on the page are all blurring together. She understands what it all means, but she’s still struggling to comprehend.

“I don’t know how they did it or, well…” Alex trails off, caught up in the science of it. “She’s ours,  _ biologically _ .”

Biologically.

In place of a real reaction, idle thoughts flicker through her mind. Did she carry the girl? Did Alex? She can’t picture herself pregnant, but she never pictured herself as a mother either and here she is. She can see a lab, a petri dish, an excited Alex Danvers spinning a version of her around. And morning sickness, but continuing health, and all of those things she had been prepared to promise at an altar. 

On their first trip to Midvale together, Alex had pulled her up to the roof to watch the stars. Stargazing had never been so romantic in Blue Springs; while the stars weren’t quite as bright over Alex’s childhood home, Alex did her best to fill in the gaps in each constellation with her words. They laughed and kissed and cuddled, but then Alex had grown solemn as her finger hovered over one specific star shining off in the distance.

_ Rao _ .

She’d known Kara was Supergirl early on, but she hadn’t wanted to press Alex on the details of their sisterhood. She knew what it was like to have secrets. All she could do was wait for Alex to open up to her. Sure enough, that night, as they lay together under the stars bearing their souls to one another, Alex opened up about how Kara came to live with them.

In another life, she and Alex made the same decision as Zor-El and Alura, to send their daughter off through time and space, to another version of themselves that they hoped would love her and care for her.

There’s a photo of the girl’s pod in Alex’s stack of papers. It’s only big enough to fit a human girl no older than Kindergarten-age, and silver too, clearly reminiscent of Kara’s own Kryptonian ship. She traces the photograph, the glyphs on the side, wondering about the design. Did the other Alex design it? Was she just as brilliant as the Alex standing before her? Questions were swimming around and fogging her away from her shock.

“I’m not going to force you into anything you don’t want,” Alex announces, gentle but resolute, pulling Maggie out of her shock-induced fog and back to the present, “But you deserved to know. And I-I’m gonna care for her. Raise her.”

“Alex, that’s huge,” she says, voice gravelly.

“It is, but I want this. I’ve...been thinking about kids ever since our break up.” She pauses out of respect, of acknowledgement between them as if it’s for a fallen colleague. “I’m not fooling myself. This won’t be easy.”

The determination in her voice cuts Maggie to the core. The results of the DNA tests are still clutched in her hands, almost ready to tear. She looks again to the picture of the pod in the DEO processing bay, as if it will give her strength to continue.

“Can I think about this?” It comes out more like a croak.

“Maggie, you don’t have-”

“No, just...this is a lot,” she rushes to assure Alex, “I need time before I decide anything.”

Alex nods and packs up her things, the picture of the pod swept back away into her bag.

The pod, the girl. She realises what’s missing from her picture.

“Alex?”

Alex stops at the door, hand on the handle. “Yeah?”

Maggie can’t look her in the eye. “What’s she like?”

Alex rustles around in her bag again, and produces the print. “Here she is.”

She takes the photo, sees the lines from where the printer had been running low on ink— a printed page, as if Alex thought she wouldn’t want the inconvenience of a message in her inbox, as if the physicality of the paper would be more proof that this is real.

“What's her name?” she asks, almost inaudible.

“Jamie.”

_ Jamie. _

She has always liked that name.

She’s sitting with Supergirl in the photo, their cheeks pressed together, sporting matching grins.

Maggie sees it. The eyes and around her hairline are Alex, but her cheeks, smile, and nose are all Maggie.

The door softly clicks but Maggie is there, frozen, staring into the face of her daughter.

~

“I want to meet her.”

“Maggie…”

It takes her two whole weeks to call Alex back to her apartment. In that time, a thousand emotions had crashed against her bow each day. 

Sometimes she wanted to roar down the phone, or storm the DEO, ask why Alex hadn’t called her there on the first day. Demand to see this child from the photograph that by now had wrinkles from her handling it. 

Sometimes she awoke with icy fear in her stomach and wanted to pack everything, grab a flight, and run away from her life. She could forget her career, her past, start again somewhere new. 

Sometimes she wanted to lock herself in an interview observation room, listening to countless footsteps go up and down the corridor outside or the buzz of the fluorescent lights bearing down on the empty table and chairs. 

But she didn’t do any of those things. She forced herself through every howling reaction trying to process through the emotion to get to the logic. Eventually the storm calmed, and then she called Alex. 

And now she stands at at her apartment window, watching as the dusk fades behind the hulking skyscrapers. The sun is dimmed to an orange glow, bringing out the whiskey tones in Alex’s eyes, and she finds it easier to stare out at the National City skyline than risk getting caught up in them.

And this kid,  _ their _ kid. She has Alex’s eyes. Does the sun bring out those same honey and whiskey tones in hers?

Those are the kind of questions that have been ringing in Maggie’s ears over the last two weeks.  

“Please. I’ve been thinking about this, a lot.” She runs her hands up her own biceps, providing the comfort part of her still longs for from the other woman. “And I...I want to meet her.”

Behind her, Alex sighs. Maggie doesn’t blame her; it has been two weeks with no contact, the ball firmly in Maggie’s court. She had worried Alex might think her selfish for taking all of that time, but now she senses wariness at the decision that has been reached.

After seeing her almost-wife after seven months and then hearing that they have a child together, she needed time to grapple with the enormity of the situation, time to battle through every stupid human thought that raced through her mind.

“When you meet her, she’s gonna think you’re her mother, Maggie.” Alex sounds tired, like she’s been up for two days straight on an op, and Maggie wonders if she’s getting enough sleep. “She’s gonna think she’s known you her whole life. It won’t be a first meeting for her.”

Finally, Maggie turns, lifting her head. “I understand.”

“She thinks...you’ve been busy at work.” Alex twitches, as if afraid this was the wrong thing to say, and then presses on when no rebuke comes. “That’s why you haven’t been around.”

“Alex,” she stresses the name, “I want to meet her. I want to...try.”

Alex’s hesitation is palpable, the quiet stretching out to fill the room. Unable to hold her stare, Maggie turns back and rests her forehead against the windowpane. Faintly, she can hear the honks and rumbles of the evening traffic. The lines of frustration winding around the city, holding it in a choke hold for the duration of the rush hour, and yet not as suffocating as the silence in her own apartment.

There used to be a time when she and Alex could sit in silence as they both worked, the small touches and gentle smiles all the communication that was needed. They were so close then.

“Okay.” A pause, the vulnerability of a single word shaking the moment. “I need you to  _ try _ , okay? I mean really try.”

“Yeah.”

They agree to meet at the small park near Alex’s apartment. The apartment they used to share. Now the dresser drawers that once held her button downs and jeans were likely taken up by much smaller clothing.

She’s early, partly out of habit, partly from nerves, so she sits on a bench across from the jungle gym and waits. A light summer breeze carries laughter from the swingset as two girls dare each other to go higher and higher, their parents watching nearby. Her palms are sweaty as she rubs them together. 

“Mommy!” The voice rings out over the chirping of the birds.

She’s been called many things, but  _ Mommy _ has never been one of them. She should have no reason to turn, no reason to recognize that voice, but somehow she does. It’s so familiar in a way that she just can’t explain and the instant she hears it, she knows it’s her daughter.

Alex had been firm when they’d set up the meeting. She didn’t want to get Jamie’s hopes up, so if Maggie wanted to meet their daughter, she had to be willing to make a commitment. This wasn’t a trial run. There was no room for error.

She takes a deep breath to calm her shaking hands, and then turns towards the girl barrelling towards her. Instinctively she kneels down, and catches the girl in her arms. 

“Mommy,” the girl breathes, burying her head into Maggie’s shoulder, squeezing as tightly as her tiny arms can manage. “I missed you so much.”

As Maggie holds Jamie for the first time, any part of her that had remained unconvinced by Alex’s story or the genetic test or even the photograph is silenced. This girl is real and solid and  _ her daughter.  _

She feels Alex’s eyes on them, but all she can focus on is the tiny child burrowing further into her embrace, before pulling back and bouncing on her toes. Maggie gets a good look at her face, drinking in the details, reaching up to carefully push back the curtain of dark hair. 

Jamie is babbling so quickly that Maggie can only catch every third word, but the girl is clearly thrilled to see her. Finally, she repeats her earlier phrase, “I missed you so much.”

“Yeah,” Maggie chokes, “but I’ve been catching bad guys.”

Nodding solemnly, Jamie takes Maggie’s words and treats them as if they are of utmost importance. As if she understands the hardships Maggie often faces in her job. Then, like a switch has been flipped, her face lights up and Maggie is met with a smile that she has only seen reflected back at her in the mirror. Her double— dimples and all.

“Watch me on the slide!” she exclaims, eyes gleaming with excitement.

The girl is off in a flash and Maggie stands, brushing dirt off of the knees of her jeans. Shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun, she watches as Jamie scrambles up the steps of the slide and— after checking to see that she’s got her mother’s attention— gleefully slides down, only to run back to the steps to repeat the whole process.

“Hey,” she finally addresses Alex as she collapses back down on the park bench next to her.  

“Hey, you.” The greeting is friendly but guarded, and Maggie feels every bit like a specimen under a microscope slide. She knows Alex is looking for any hesitation on her part, any chance that she might slip up. Her earlier warnings echo through Maggie’s head.

But she can’t dwell on that. Not when Jamie’s giggles ring out across the playground— a sound that could make even J’onn J’onzz break out into a broad smile.

She shakes her head in wonder. “She’s…real.”

Alex smiles contentedly, watching as Jamie climbs up the steps once more. “Yeah. The last two weeks have been a lot of learning.”

“Learning, huh?” Maggie repeats.

“Oh yeah. I’ve gotten splashed in punishment for not knowing the bath time song, I’ve woken up to tiny hands slapping at my cheeks at 3am, and I’ve already had to replace a vase that got knocked over by a game of tag.”

Despite the static tension humming around them, as if a single second of eye contact would give them a jolt, Maggie laughs. If these playful anecdotes were supposed to be hidden cautions, she doesn’t accept them as such. 

The little girl skips across the playground, her sneakers lighting up with each footfall. Clearly Kara has had some influence on her wardrobe. She’s actually fairly surprised Jamie isn’t clad in Supergirl merchandise from head to toe. Instead she’s wearing a blue shirt with a cartoon German Shepherd.

“Paw Patrol, huh?” She’s seen the dog before. One of the boys down at the station has a son who just celebrated his fifth birthday with a party themed after the show, much to his father’s annoyance.

“She uh, loves it. We’ve been watching a lot of it. The police dog is her favorite.”

Again, the comment is pointed. Jamie idolizes her mother- idolizes  _ her _ . The idea fills her with a kind of pride that she’s never felt before. 

And later, when she gets up to push Jamie on the swings, her daughter’s laughter ringing in her ears, she begins to understand why Alex wanted to take on this responsibility. She spies Alex watching their interactions with a kind of suspicion, like the situation could spiral into danger and she is preparing to spring into action at any given second. She bites the inside of her cheek, pushing down the anger in favour of telling herself that Alex has plenty of reason to be cautious. 

When Jamie tires of the swings, Maggie offers to buy the three of them ice cream. Rather than sit with her and Alex at the edge of the sandbox, she immediately runs back off to eat her chocolate and vanilla swirl cone on the top of the play structure. 

“I’d like to think it’s been seamless, but it really has been tough. She’s trying to adjust to my apartment, rather than her house on that other Earth. I think I might swap apartments with Kara, have more room.” Alex licks a stray trickle of quickly melting ice cream off of the side of her cone, glancing for Maggie’s reaction. “I’m trying really hard to be as good as the other me. To get up to speed as fast as I can, y’know?”

“I want to help.” Maggie turns to face her and cuts to the quick. All afternoon Alex has been given her coded hints that she has a chance to back away if she thinks she can’t handle the bad days, the downsides, the struggles of being a mother to a young girl. She resists the urge to place a reassuring hand on her ex-fiancé's knee. “I want to be a part of this, Alex. This is just as much my responsibility as it is yours.”

Alex stares for a long time, and then gazes over at Jamie, still perched at the top of the play structure. Then she nods sharply. 

“Okay,” she says, “Okay.”

Maggie bids goodbye to Alex and a teary-eyed Jamie, kneeling down to her daughter’s level once more to gather her into a tight hug. Jamie nods between sniffles as Maggie recites the cover story she and Alex created, but guilt settles low in her belly the entire ride back to her apartment. She’s her daughter’s hero, but instead of being at home with her, she’s sitting alone on her cheap thrifted couch.

Alex had slipped a USB drive into her hand before they’d parted ways at the park, but now that she’s staring at the folder of home videos, she can’t bring herself to watch them. She’s curious, yes. How could she not be? But that detective’s curiosity is tempered by trepidation— by fear of what she might find. Those videos feel like the last piece of the puzzle. The last bit of evidence needed to crack the case wide open.

She hovers the mouse over the files, but then closes the laptop lid. 

~

Maggie visits a few times each week. Despite her hesitance, she had made a promise to Alex and Jamie and she fully intends to keep it.

It’s just the three of them at first. Sometimes Maggie brings them breakfast— she never forgot Alex’s coffee order— and they watch cartoons on the couch before Maggie has to go to the station. Other times Jamie settles on her lap with a book while Alex does laundry or has a much deserved nap.

The first time Kara joins them, it’s a surprise. As she plays a game with her niece, Maggie listens to them, and realises that Kara knows things about her daughter that she doesn’t. 

She is still learning day by day, trying to slowly fit herself into the picture. But true to her nature, Kara breezes in and already seems to knows the routines, the prompts. She doesn’t slip up where Maggie does, doesn’t have to correct herself or question as much. 

She knows that Jamie likes the crusts cut off her sandwiches— except if they’re peanut butter and jelly.

She suspects that Kara has seen the videos, the ones that taunt Maggie from her desktop. The curl of jealousy that weaves through her is irrational, Kara is the girl’s aunt after all, but she can’t help but feel its burn.

That tips her scales dramatically, and she sits down that night to watch them all.

It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone, staring at a woman that shares her face, waving at the camera, a baby in her lap. Another her. Another life.

In the second video, a baby Jamie toddles forward, away from the camera and towards a smiling Alex. They’re in Midvale, Maggie recognizes Eliza’s favorite blue rug from the living room. Her own voice emanates from behind the camera, cheering her on. Jamie’s first steps.

Each video is a new scene of domestic bliss— a life she never imagined herself having; and with each one of Jamie’s firsts, she’s filled with a sense of wonder and loss. These women gathering around their daughter on her bed, teaching her to read, will never see another first. They’ll never see her first day of school or see her learn to ride a bike.

They’ll never be around to see Jamie grow up.

She opens the last video to shaky footage. She can hear Kara, who must be holding the camera, creeping around the house, dodging discarded toys like she’s walking through a minefield. The camera sweeps over a sleeping Jamie, laying on her back, sound in her slumber. 

Kara coos, spinning the little rocketship mobile above the crib, before sneaking into the next room. The camera zooms in on two sleeping figures. Alex and Maggie are sprawled out on the couch, limbs entwined, mouths wide open. They’re clearly exhausted, catching sleep when they can. The camera pans back to the baby, her mouth wide open. 

“Like daughter, like mothers,” Kara says and the video fades to black.

She leans away from her laptop, sucks in a deep breath. She’s sure now.

She needs to be a part of her daughter’s life. She wasn’t there for so many of her firsts, but she wants to be there for the rest of them.

Jamie has lost two parents who adored her to the ends of the Earth, and she’s going to make sure that she never knows it. There will never be another gap- another absence of love and affection again.

Any hesitation about easing her way into Alex and Jamie’s life is dropped. All her tentativeness is cleansed. 

When Jamie opens Kara’s apartment door, Maggie sweeps her up, coaxing a rattle of giggles out of the girl. She carries Jamie to the island, where Alex is looking at her warily. 

“How would you feel about a trip to the zoo today?” Maggie asks by way of a  _ hello _ .

Jamie's eyes go huge and hopeful. “Really?”

“If your other mommy says it’s okay…” Maggie gives Alex a coy look. “Well?”

“Please,” Jamie begs, “Please, please, please!”

Alex blooms into a smile, flattening her palms against her hips. “Yeah,” she says, nodding, “That sounds like a great idea.”

Even as Jamie's triumphant cry leaves her left ear ringing, Maggie is focused on the relieved slump of Alex's shoulders. 

Progress.


	2. Chapter 2

Stealing away to pace alone in a deserted corridor of the DEO on that very first night, Alex’s thumb had hovered over the option to call her mother.

She imagined what she might say, went through every permutation. The situation was blind-siding, and she craved any immediate guidance, but she couldn’t comprehend it fully herself, nevermind trying to convince her mother.

They’d gotten closer in the years since Kara became Supergirl, once their secrets were all laid out to bare, and Eliza had been nothing but supportive of her coming out and her relationship with Maggie. Still, the years of passive aggression could not be erased. A part of her was afraid to hear an _“Are you sure about this Alexandra?”_ rather than a “ _Let me know what you need, sweetheart.”_

She bounced her phone in her palms, slid it in and out of her pocket, before going for the smarter option: she called J’onn.

Somewhere between bailing her out of jail, setting her on a better road in life, and giving her his job, he had become her father figure. Whenever she felt like her world was tipping upside-down and the blood was rushing to her head, he was always there, guiding her with a steady hand and an open ear.

Whether it was as her superior or as her friend and mentor, Alex rarely saw J’onn visibly affected by an incident or shocked by an occurrence. They’d battled Kryptonian invaders, shed blood side by side. Even when she was recovering from the tank, only the slight twitch of his jaw betrayed his inner turmoil and worry.

On the phone his voice was patient, steady even as she jumped through the pieces— the crash, the child, the video. How she wasn’t sure who she was supposed to call; her mother, _Maggie_. How she wasn’t sure how to even begin. He’d listened, he’d asked questions, and then he had come right away.

Yet his poker face melted away as he stepped into the DEO. He later told her he had sensed the girl’s presence right away, the unrestrained, gleeful thoughts of a child running rampant in the psychic atmosphere.

Standing outside the medical room, he described it like a streak of colour in a sea of grey, and clasped Alex’s shoulder as if to steady himself.

Before he had even spoken to Jamie, he confirmed what she already knew. “She’s yours.”

Alex nodded dumbly, intently watching his face as it twitched, as he saw things she never would: Jamie’s first memories with her parents, another world through the eyes of a tiny girl. He inhaled and exhaled in an almost hypnotic rhythm, but his eyes were glazed, occasionally sparking with emerald light.

She searched clues as to what happened to her. “Is she really a refugee?”

He closed his eyes, still for a moment, and then his words rumbled out as if from another room. “I can see her recognition of this place, of you. I can see…” His brow flinched. “A world getting much too warm. At least, what she perceived it to be.”

How much could a child on the brink of the apocalypse really understand? Did she just think it was an early summer? Did that other Alex dress her in shorts and T-shirts, give her popsicles and pretend it was just a very hot day when the reality was that death signalled to them from every climb of the temperature gauge?

A child couldn’t watch a news report, couldn’t understand what the statistics meant. And Alex and Maggie— _the other_ Alex and Maggie— likely shielded her from a lot of the hysteria, frantically plotting her survival beyond them.

And here she was.

J’onn’s eyes opened, sharp and clear again. He dropped his hand away from Alex’s shoulder.

She felt the loss of it keenly. Without his presence mooring her, her mind drifted. This child— her child— would need her. But this wasn’t how she’d planned her life. She’d expected to have support. To have a partner.

A partner.

_Maggie._

“Should I call her?” Her voice trembled, panic working its way through her body. The wheels were coming off the car, skidding on hot tarmac, angry spark flaring up. “I need...to prove this first, right? I did blood tests but I haven’t- at least, I mean- I need to be sure before I…”

She couldn’t just go to Maggie with this out of the blue. Not after everything that had happened. She looked to J’onn to validate her decision, but he had left her side to attend to a more immediate need.

Without preamble, he entered the medical bay. Jamie’s reaction was instantaneous, her frown transforming into a toothy grin.

“Uncle J’onn!” she cried happily, flinging Pickles to the side to bounce towards him. He caught her just before she launched herself off of the bed, hugging her tightly.

They sat on the bed side by side, Jamie’s legs swinging joyfully at J’onn’s company. He rifled in his pocket and removed a package of Chocos, offering her one. Alex watched them passing cookies back and forth from the outside, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Kara. _I’m at the grocery store. Do you think Jamie likes Coco Puffs or Captain Crunch?_

Alex couldn’t even think about cereal, not when she felt like she was drowning. She needed her sister to buoy her. To help keep her head above water so that she could just think.

Her fingers tapped wildly. _Can you stay with us tonight? I need to work this out._

The response was immediate. _Of course. I’ll go to yours._

_I’ll meet you there._

Alex leaned against the glass again, listening to J’onn reassure Jamie that no one was angry with her, they were just really busy, and they were doing important jobs.

The glass was cool against her head. She felt as if she was in a thick fog, unable to see ten feet in front of her, but she could see here and now very clearly—

She was going to be a mother.

~

It rarely rains in National City, but the day of their planned zoo trip, it pours.

Maggie has no sooner confirmed the visit with Alex than it starts hammering against Kara’s living room windows, just as she is putting on Jamie’s shoes. The minute they realise the zoo would have to wait until another day, Jamie runs to stand by them, palms pressed to the panes, tears streaming down her cheeks in tandem with the water streaking along the glass.

Alex frets at the sudden turn but Maggie isn’t distressed. She whips out her phone to search for alternative options— inside activities that might placate an upset child with a curious mind. She kneels down by Jamie, gently turning her from the window to look at her.

“I know you really wanted to see the elephants, didn’t you?” she prompts.

Jamie sniffs once, twice and nods. She shuffles, one shoe on and one off. Alex watches cautiously as Maggie smiles, brushes some dark hair behind Jamie’s ear.

“Well, we can’t go to the zoo, cause they’re really scared of rain and they all hide. But…” Maggie says, elongating for effect, “What if I told you we could go see some fluffy elephants?”

“Fluffy?” Jamie parrots.

“Mmhmm. Huge, fluffy elephants.”

Life picks Jamie back up, and she’s bouncing on her toes again, looking to Alex for approval. “Can we go, please?”

As they wrestle Jamie’s other shoe on, Alex murmurs, “Natural History Museum?” Maggie nods, and she can’t help but grin. “Genius.”

Jamie practically drags her parents out the door to the National City Natural History Museum.

Alex hasn’t been to the museum since she was a kid. But now with Jamie, she’s seeing all of the exhibits she loved as a kid again through her daughter’s eyes.

Passing by each exhibit, Jamie lights up with delight and wonder, but the dinosaurs are of particular interest. She peers up at the massive skeletons in awe and lets out a tiny roar. Maggie winks at Alex and imitates her, roaring loader.

Holding up her phone to capture the moment, Alex laughs, a lightness in her chest that hasn’t been present since the night she had to go to Maggie’s new apartment and tell her the truth about the girl.

Chancing the lack of tension between them, she waves Maggie over to look at the video, and they share a smile as they send the video to Kara.

When they look back over though, Jamie is nowhere to be seen.

She’s gone.

Instantly Alex fills with panic, grabbing at Maggie’s bicep as they dart in between families and school groups, calling her name. She’s just about ready to go to the front desk to ask to make an announcement when Maggie spots Jamie standing in front of a plexiglass case. Behind the barrier is a diorama featuring a lush river scene and initially Alex is confused as to why this exhibit had pulled at her daughter’s attention, but then she sees the taxidermied inhabitants.

“Look!” Jamie says, tugging at Alex’s sleeve and pointing, “It’s Pickles!”

Sure enough, a pair of river otters are staged beautifully in the diorama, two females posed mid-action, one running after the other along the rocks. They look almost real, as if they could jump right into the painted river and glide through the water with ease.

Alex reaches out to Jamie’s shoulder with trembling fingers, subconsciously checking that she’s still there.

“Yeah,” Alex breathes, half-delirious with relief, “There he is.”

It takes her the entire walk from the American River Otter diorama down the hall to the nocturnal animal diorama for her anxiety to subside. Under the low lighting of the exhibit, as Jamie slinks away from the bats to peer through the glass at the a large stuffed owl, she allows herself to relax enough to make conversation.

“She’s so curious, and fearless,” she says, catching glimpses of Maggie’s in the meagre light. “She just soaks up information like a sponge.”

Maggie snorts. “I wonder who she gets that from.”

She continues on ahead, but the playful comment cements something so heavy in Alex’s stomach that she’s slowed for a second.  

She watches as Jamie sounds out the words on the sign, wide-eyed with childlike wonder. She’s still learning to read, but she manages a name of an owl and grins at them. Maggie gives her a thumbs up, and that _something_ grows heavier.

But it isn’t like a dead weight of dread, it’s the heaviness that comes with the lack of want to get out from under a cosy blanket on a cold day, or the satisfaction of a full meal after an afternoon of hunger pangs.

“You know, I used to come here as a kid, when mom and dad drove up to the city,” she says, more to herself than Maggie. But the other woman swings around in interest, fixing her attention on her in a way that causes a flutter of nerves in Alex’s stomach. She palms the back of her neck. “Seemed so big then. Marble floors and tall ceilings. I’d never be able to get through it all in a day.”

Maggie quirks her head, smirking in that familiar way, and Alex is almost relieved when she trains her eyes back on their daughter.

Now, Jamie is copying the owl sounds that emit from the speakers.

“Well,” Maggie finally responds, slipping her hands in her back pockets, “We can bring her as often as she likes.”

_We._

_We can._

They haven’t had a conversation about their future yet. It’s been day by day, but this is an olive branch from Maggie. Together they would nurture Jamie’s curiosity, and when it came time to talk about the harder stuff, she would have a partner by her side.

That heaviness sinks right down like lead in her feet and knees now, as if wanting to anchor herself in this single moment for the rest of her life; Jamie’s hooting, Maggie’s humouring stare, but she pushes on.

They move on to more exhibits, Jamie tugging their hands and pointing at the fossilized fish. They pass gems and minerals, all the strange rare animals, but it’s the wooly mammoth models that stop them in their tracks. Jamie’s eyes grow wide as saucers, suddenly struck silent by the size of the creatures.

Maggie beckons her closer to the exhibits, reading off of a plaque. “Here are two female mammoths, Wilma and Winnifred. It says here that their fur coats keep them warm in the cold.”

Jamie reaches out to rub at the fur of the trunk of a smaller mammoth next to the adults, completely enraptured as Maggie reads on.

“See? I told you there were fluffy elephants,” she teases, leaning down next to Jamie to stroke the mammoth calf’s trunk too.

The museum loudspeaker announces the museum closing and they’re finally able to drag her away from the exhibit with the promise of ice cream. Maggie buys them all cones from a vendor and they sit outside on the front steps. The rain has finally let up and the sun is shining through the remaining clouds.

“Did you like the fuzzy elephants?” Jamie asks for the third time since leaving the museum, swivelling her head to both of them.

“Sure did,” Maggie replies, “They were big, weren’t they?”

“They were huge!” She digs into her cup of cookie dough, shoving a spoonful in her mouth without stopping to talk. “There were two mommies and a baby, just like us.”

Alex looks at Maggie to gauge her reaction, but Maggie grins and nods. “That’s right. Just like us.”

And with that, the last of the apprehension fizzles away from Alex. Two mommies and a baby. That’s what they were. A family.

She finishes her own ice cream quickly, and just sits back and watches the two of them, marveling about Jamie’s sense of wonder. Was that just a kid thing or did she get that from one of them?

Maggie spouts off a few facts about the wooly mammoths, ones Alex doesn’t remember reading on the information card by the exhibit, and Jamie absorbs every word, asking questions and listening with rapt attention as her mother explains. She imagines a much smaller Maggie coming home from a trip to the museum, pouring over a book to learn everything she could about the creatures.

Perhaps Jamie would do the same thing.

Alex closes her eyes and listens, with sun on her face, but healing warmth even stronger in her heart.

~

She hadn’t always loved this apartment; when it was hers, the exposed windows let too much light in when she was hungover, searing through her mornings after. The exposed brick was brittle, reminding her of those days before she’d built her muscle and strength as an agent, when she was a strong bottle of gin and a protruding ribcage of a girl.

Even as she’s been in it hundreds of times since her bad days, to actually live in it again brings a sour taste to her mouth. But then she hears the lilting, off-melody hum of Jamie attempting to replicate the theme song for _Mr Bradley’s Special Adventures_ , and that omen clears.

It will be strange to find herself inhabiting it once more, after giving it to Kara when she moved to National City, but it’s for the best.  

She pulls her favorite mug out of the moving box marked _kitchen_ and places it in the now empty cabinet. It had taken all afternoon but she was finally unpacked, save for the last few boxes Kara had gone back to her old apartment to retrieve.

A rap on the door sounds and Kara barrels through as soon as Alex opens it, making a beeline towards Jamie, the remaining boxes from her old place abandoned by the door. “How’s my niece?”

“Aunty Kara!” Jamie leaps up from where she’s been playing with Pickles and runs over. Kara catches her, swinging her around easily.

Chuckling, Alex pushes the boxes over the threshold. It’s handy having a super for a sister. What would have taken her days to move had taken an afternoon. Hopefully Jamie would feel more at home once they’re all unpacked.

The videos from their other selves had been an invaluable aid in helping Jamie settle in without much fuss. They’d clearly done a lot of planning in the hopes that the transition would be seamless and Jamie would be none the wiser. There were lists of favorite foods, bedtime stories, and games; all of her particulars and preferences. The only thing they hadn’t accounted for was housing.

Jamie had never been able to settle in Alex’s earthy apartment; she had been moody from the beginning about not being able to go home. She had believed the story they’d spun about an alien destroying their old house, but that still didn’t placate the young girl who longed for the big backyard they’d seen in the videos. All she wanted to do was go outside and play in the sun, but instead she was cooped up in the bachelorette apartment.

Swapping apartments with her sister won’t fix the problem, but at least it will be a brighter, environment, and it is familiar enough that it will hopefully stave off more questions until they can find a more permanent solution.

“Thank you for bringing this over,” she says as Kara heads back to assist with the last box she’d left in the hall.

Kara waves it off. “Not a problem.”

Jamie hovers over one of the larger boxes, one she’d helped to pack earlier in the day. Alex cuts the box open, and the girl pulls a myriad of toys out.

“Who knew kids were so expensive, huh?” Alex motions to the growing pile of toys on the floor. “Maybe Maggie had a point.”

Kara gives her a small, half-smile. “I’m glad you’re at a place you can joke about it.”

Alex glances down at the box. There’s three more just like it sitting behind the couch— all clothes and utilities she’d had to rush out and buy. She’d always thought she’d have more time to prepare for a kid. More time to feel ready.

She collapses onto the couch, her muscles sore from heavy lifting. She’ll deal with the rest of the boxes later. “It’s hard not to. This is all so surreal. If I don’t laugh I’ll cry.”

Kara stretches out next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She leans into the embrace, taking comfort in her sister’s support.

She’s not sure she could do this without Kara either. Danvers Sister nights have always been her opportunity to relax— to find some semblance of normalcy in a life that is so often filled with the strange and unexplained.

With the addition of Jamie, Danvers Sister Nights have become Danvers Girl Nights; the entertainment skewing a little younger now that Kara has an ally in selecting films. Alex pretends to be annoyed when Kara picks a Disney film or a musical, if only to make Jamie laugh, but always finds herself singing right along with them.  

Alex thinks these moments mean more to Kara than she’ll ever admit.

Kara came to them a teenager, and from what Alex has gleaned from stories of Krypton, their culture never emphasized play for their youth. Her sister never had a childhood, not the kind she would always see on Earth television and not the kind Alex herself had, but now she has the chance to experience at least some of it, through the eyes of her niece.

Jamie has brought out the inner child in all of them lately.

Her phone buzzes with a text message, Maggie’s name flashing across the screen.

_Hey, sorry I missed dinner. I hope the move went well. I’m off shift at half 6 so if you need anything, let me know._

Her thumbs hover over the keyboard of her phone.

Clearly Maggie is intending to come over after work, and Alex wants that, but it causes a confused bundle in her stomach. The last few nights Maggie had slept on her couch, and just this morning she’d joked that she was happy about the apartment switch if only for the fact that Kara’s sofa was going to be better to sleep on than Alex’s. Those comments hint at a sense of permanency.

Jamie giggles from across the room. Her stuffed animals are lined up against the wall and she’s moving Pickles about between them.

Kara cocks an eyebrow at the furry lineup. “How _is_ my niece?”

“I expected her to be more tired after the last few days. The museum, then the move.”

“I’m surprised the poor thing isn’t tuckered out,” Kara says, watching as Jamie sprawls out on her stomach and kicks her feet.

Alex nudges Kara with her elbow. “Maybe she gets her energy levels from her aunt.”

Kara beams and they fall silent, just listening to Jamie chatter on to Pickles about which stuffed suspect is responsible for eating the last cookie. She’d been introduced to Officer Pickles early on; one of the first things Jamie had asked for at the store when she was picking out some new toys was a police officer dress-up kit. She’d explained, as if it were obvious, that Officer Pickles couldn’t be a proper officer of the law unless he had a hat.

It’s more proof of how much Maggie means to her daughter.

“Wine?” Kara’s voice pulls her from her thoughts.

“Please.”

Getting up to amble to the island, Kara glances at Jamie running back and forth past the divider where they’ve set up her new bed. “Your first day back tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Alex lets out a whoosh of breath, dramatically tipping her head forward in faux-exasperation. She reaches out for the offered wine with grabby hands.

Kara pours wine into two glasses and carries them both back to the couch. “Do you think anyone noticed it wasn’t you?”

Alex considers it. Seeing J’onn adopt her gait and combat attire to pose as the Director was jarring, but she’s thankful for his periodic updates. Without him, she wouldn’t have been able to settle into her new normal so quickly, and he’d given her the opportunity to bond with Jamie.

“J’onn does such a good job.”

Kara snorts, clearly remembering how J’onn had posed as Supergirl, then hands her the glass of wine.

She takes a small sip, the wine bitter on her tongue. She hasn’t been drinking nearly as much as she used to. This is her first in a month. “I’m hoping once Maggie and I get into the swing of things, we’ll work out a schedule that means we both get back to work.”

“Yeah, it’s still new.” Kara stretches out on the couch, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table. “So, _Maggie_.”

Edgy at the tone shift, Alex isn’t sure what she’s supposed to say. “She stayed over again last night.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

Kara swirls her wine, pushes her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. “I didn’t say anything. Just oh.”

But Alex knows better. Sometimes she hates having a reporter for a sister.

Ever since Kara got a whiff of the fact that Maggie was back in her life, she’s been unshakeable from her pursuit of information. She knows Kara means well— but she knows what she’s doing.

Kara bites the inside of her cheek, considering her sister. “Are you still, I mean,” she pauses, leaning in, “Do you still love her?”

Alex makes sure tiny ears aren’t in earshot. “I...” The museum, the last few days, they flicker in her mind as if projected. She pulls a throw pillow into her lap, fiddling with its seams. “I was watching her sleep this morning and I just…I’m so confused.”

Kara remains silent, urging Alex to continue talking, if just to fill the space. Now that she’s finally voicing some of the thoughts that have been swirling around her head, she’s finding it difficult to stop. “This is everything I want, Kara. I’m watching her with Jamie and I… God, I don’t know.”

“I know it’s a little late to ask but Maggie wasn’t dating anyone, right?”

“She didn’t mention anyone.” She curls her fingers into a fist, tugs the pillow tightly to her. “I’ve been so caught up in becoming a mom, I haven’t let myself imagine what it would be like if she was dating someone else. But I don’t think...”

“If she is single…” Kara’s comment is suggestive, meant as a tease, but Alex just stares into her wine. She presses on; they’ve been sisters for long enough that Kara knows when Alex needs a bit of a push. “There’s a but, isn’t there?”

Alex watches the wine slosh up the side of the glass as she rotates it idly in her hand. She has seen the change in Maggie’s attitude more and more. She’s a fixture in their lives, no longer walking on eggshells, instead throwing herself wholeheartedly into her role as Jamie’s other caregiver.

She’s gentle with their daughter, attentive. When Jamie speaks, all of Maggie’s attention is on her.

And their relationship has thawed too.

Maggie brings groceries and always stays for dinner. She is more than happy to work out her rotations in advance so that Alex can get support when she needs it, if there’s a case that needs her expertise. At the first mention of the haphazard living arrangements, she even offered to do chores in Kara’s apartment, which baffled both of the Danvers sisters.

She even keeps track of how much shampoo gets used, making sure the stocks aren’t low.

Alex isn't sure what caused the sudden switch before the day at the museum, but she's certainly not complaining. It’s so domestic, it almost feels like a dream.

As she takes another slow sip of wine, her eye catches a discarded toy that is draped over the side of Jamie’s toy box. She wants this with Maggie. This easy intimacy. She wants what they had. But it would be unbelievably selfish to pick Maggie back up from where she just threw her down.

The guilt grows larger, looming over her, like a shadow lengthening in the sunset.

That’s not what she wants. She knows what she wants, what she’s always wanted. But _now_ it wouldn’t be fair. Not after everything she’d said. Not how this dream situation has unfolded. It’s not as easy as saying,  _“Oh yeah I wanna be with you now because look our kid issue is fixed!”_

“I can’t let myself…” Alex struggles to find the words. “This is my fantasy. This is a gift.” Her throat feels tight, swollen from emotion. “Jamie, Maggie, imagining a house and…”

She drinks a longer swig.

Kara’s stare is unwavering, and Alex continues, the words spilling out quickly now, “This crazy, amazing thing has happened to me. Out of the blue, you know? Here we are.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “This situation is what I imagined when I was with Maggie, when we were fighting over kids, I held onto these images, tried to make her want it with me.”

Holidays. Birthdays. Family gatherings.

All those firsts...

“But she didn’t. She didn’t want it. And that was...fine.” Alex waves about to illustrate her point. “And now I get what I wanted anyway.”

She finishes her wine, slumping forward on the couch, massaging her temples.

“Alex, I’ve seen Maggie with Jamie, and I don’t think it’s the case that she’s being forced into motherhood.” She looks over at Jamie, still engrossed in her game of make-believe. “But it’s you I’m worried about.”

They’re out of Jamie’s eyesight, but Alex haunches forward anyway. Jamie has to remain unaware of her own inner turmoil. “No, I’m not saying she doesn’t want Jamie. That’s not what I mean. She _chose_ her. Maggie chose Jamie.”

“So why are you scared she’ll chose you too?”

Kara has hit the nail on the head. This is what Alex has been avoiding. The hard truth she can’t face.

“Because I feel like I don’t deserve it.”

That’s the kicker.

She can have the kid, she shouldn’t get the wife.

“But Maggie is staying over pretty regularly?”

“Only sometimes.” Alex says and Kara’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. “It’s temporary, until we figure this out.” Kara still doesn’t reply, crossing her arms, and Alex gets flustered. “Kara, it’s only for now. It’s not like we’re sleeping together or anything. Hurry up and go get the bottle from the counter.”

“For now…” Kara mutters as she goes for the bottle and then passes it down to her sister.

Alex pinches her brow. “What I mean is, I’m sleeping in the bed, she’s sleeping on the couch. Not...together, in _any_ way.”

She pours and decides to ignore the little noise of disbelief Kara gives.

“Have you two talked about being together?”

“No, we haven’t even touched it. We’ve been focused on Jamie. Not...Not us at all.”

“Well maybe-”

The door swings open and Maggie blusters in, cutting Kara off mid-sentence. Her arms are laden with boxes that she dumps onto the counter.

“Hey, sorry I missed dinner,” she breathes, exasperated. Kara and Alex join her at the island, spying a LEGO set, two boxes of Girl Scout cookies (Alex’s favourite flavour), and also—

“I got these for you, too.” Maggie holds up a box of peanut butter cookies, shooting Kara a nervous smile. “I, uh, remember they’re your favourites, right?”

She tosses the box to Kara, who immediately digs in, but Jamie drags Maggie off with the new LEGO set to play before Alex can comment or even thank her. She sits cross-legged on the floor with Jamie, taking off her jacket and rolling up her sleeves, softly explaining that one of her colleagues heard she loved to build.

At the idea that Maggie has been talking about their daughter at work, that heaviness returns, as if she could be planted to this spot, in this moment, forever.

Kara watches them with interest for a moment, cheeks stuffed with cookies. She wipes the crumbs off her lips and leans over to Alex to whisper, “If you’re telling yourself you don’t want to be with her, try telling your face.”

Alex kicks her in the shin, but that solid, full feeling persists.

~

The next morning, Kara’s mood had tipped.

She had flown to Alex’s to bring her some breakfast and wish her well on her first day back. Jamie had been thrilled to see her aunt in the morning, and Alex had been grateful to not have to worry about feeding themselves, but neither of them had mentioned the other person in the apartment.

Kara had been just about to leave when Maggie had exited the bathroom, wearing a shirt with the slogan of the first holiday resort she’d gone to with the Danvers, when Jeremiah was still living.

A shirt Alex has had since she was fourteen.

A shirt Kara had _known_ belonged to her sister.

They had managed an awkward hello as Maggie passed her on her way to the kitchen and Kara had tried not to listen to their hushed whispers about getting Jamie dressed.

Alex had said they weren’t gonna be together because of her guilt, and yet there Maggie was, still in the apartment in the morning, parading around in Alex’s shirt.

Did something change over night? Did they have that talk finally? Did they sleep together with Jamie in the apartment? She didn’t want to think about it, but it’s all she _could_ think about.

She had shot Alex a scanadalised look when Maggie disappeared back into the bedroom area to wake Jamie and Alex had shaken her head, begging her not to say anything.

Kara flies faster, zipping through the air towards the location of the scene. She has matured into her role as a journalist, unrelenting when she had a lead. The resort shirt will not easily be dropped— she plans to bring it up later.

She stops to hover above the aftermath of a skirmish with a Galvorian, and as soon as she spots a familiar detective, she has her opening. She can’t bring it up with Alex— not so soon after their last conversation— but she can certainly test the waters with someone else.

She lands, straightens, and tosses back her hair. “Detective Sawyer.”

“Supergirl.” Maggie gives her a small smile and a wave in greeting. “Guess we do need DEO backup from time to time, huh.”

“Seem so.” Kara can see Maggie’s disappointment as she scans the faces of the DEO agents, clearly in search of Alex on her first day back. “Alex is just getting back up to speed after being absent with J’onn in her place, I hope you don’t mind that incident commander Jenkins.”

Kara gestures over to the agent and Maggie nods sharply and goes back to the notes she’s making on the crime scene. To anyone else, she’d seem calm and collected, but Kara can see the subtle clenching of her jaw.

She follows Maggie as she stalks through the scene, running through the events that had transpired. Kara doesn’t need to be there— hadn’t even been needed during the fight— but she has her own evidence to collect. Her own theories to prove. “So, I didn’t know you also went to _Resort World Summer Extravaganza ‘04.”_

Maggie stops, eyeing her super-shadow with her head tilted. It clicks right away. “I didn’t bring anything because I just expected to stay for dinner, not after. Alex kindly lent me something to wear.”

“Very kind.” Kara rocks back and forward in her boots, considering the response. Either Maggie is a good liar, or it’s the honest truth. “Does that happen a lot?”

Maggie’s response is quick and sharp. “Is that a problem?”

Kara steps back. She hadn’t meant it to sound so accusatory. “Maggie, no. I’m sorry, I just meant…” She blows out her cheeks, then resets. “I know you’re doing what’s best for Jamie.”

At the thought of Jamie, the frustration diffuses on Maggie’s face. She gazes out at the crime scene and Kara can almost see the wheels in her head turning. Finally, she digs out her phone. “Look what I got after you left.”

On the screen is a photo of Jamie and Alex making funny faces at each other over the breakfast table.

“Cuties,” Kara pauses and coyly adds, “Both of them, don’t you think?”

“Well.” Maggie pockets the phone with a shrug, sidestepping Kara’s question. “I’m picking Jamie up at two from the daycare next to the precinct.”

“Near the precinct, huh?” Kara adjusts her line of inquiry. “You clearly won that battle for jurisdiction.”

Luckily for her, Maggie takes it in her stride. “Yeah, well. It was about time.”

Kara hums and they resume their surveillance of the perimeter of scene. There’s one more thing she needs to know. Alex had said that she didn’t think Maggie was dating anyone, but if there was a third party in the picture, her sister needed to know now.

“This arrangement doesn’t give you a lot of time to be social,” she says, “Especially, with Alex going back to work today.”

Maggie turns back to her once more, looking her straight in the eye. It’s direct, but it’s not combative or defensive.“Got nothing else I’m focusing on. Work and Jamie.”

“Glad to hear it.” Kara turns. “See you later, Maggie.”

She doesn’t need to dig any further for now. She’s got the answer she’s looking for.

_~_

Her first day back at the DEO was busy, as she had expected. While J’onn had kept the place running in her stead, she still had so many cases she needed to get up to speed on, and after eight hours, her head is spinning.

She contemplates going straight home after work, but Jamie is with Maggie, and she knows it’s important for them to have a little time together on their own. Instead she decides to swing by J’onn’s PI office on her way.

“Thank you for pretending to be me for weeks, by the way,” she says as he greets her with a warm hug.

“It was my pleasure.” He ushers her into the office, and turns to prepare two cups of his favorite imported Martian tea. “And incredibly important you got to grips with suddenly being a mother.”

Alex collapses dramatically onto the couch. “I feel equally stressed and blessed.” She shakes her head, a sheepish smile on her face. “Wow, I’m officially a soccer mom’s Facebook status.”

This even brings a smile out of J’onn, who sits down with her, handing her a cup. The steam curls into the air and they both relax.

“How are things settling down?”

“She was in daycare today, then Maggie picked her up.” Alex sips her tea thoughtfully. “I think it’s good they’re gonna get some time for the two of them, y’know?”

J’onn hums. “Anything you’re worrying about?”

Like always, he’s picked up on her biggest fears, probably without even needing to read her mind. She stares at a fork in the road, wondering where to begin.

He just presses on, in that gentle way he does.“You know, raising a child with someone is an incredibly bonding experience.” There’s no judgement in his voice and she’s grateful this is not an accusation. “Especially when you have had a relationship with them.”

“I still…” She bites her lip, looks away out the window. The sun is slowly sinking below the horizon. “I still love her so much.”

She’s not sure why she can admit it to him and not to Kara or anyone else. Is it because he’s seen her at her lowest? When not even her sister had?

“And you don’t want to be with her?”

“It’s not fair.” Her hands tighten around her teacup. “She didn’t want- but she-”

That guilt rises up again, a sickening feeling in her belly. Alex shakes her head, as if to erase the thought. “Actually, I came to talk about something else.”

Jonn quirks his head, elbows on knees. “Is something else bothering you?”

“I know I just said about- well-” She lets out a stuttery, nervous laugh. “They were married. They were together.”

“Yes…”

“I keep having nightmares as if I’m her. I’m the other me. And we’re just about to die. And we’re together. And it’s...terrifying. It’s like the tank all over but it’s hot, blisteringly hot.”

Even thinking about it in the daytime makes her skin crawl. Makes the back of her throat feel dry and scratchy. She can feel her pulse quickening even though there’s no need for flight. She’s alright. She’s okay.

“If you need help sleeping, Alex…” He grimaces. “I can help you.”

Alex considers it for a moment. Really considers it. “No, because forgetting them might interfere with other things.“ She sets the cup of half-drunk liquid on the table next to the couch, then runs a shaky hand through her hair. “You know, I considered asking you to wipe me, to make me just believe I was Jamie’s mother from the beginning. But it wouldn’t work. There’s too many people you’d have to tamper with and…”

Alex waves her hands around as if the motion could explain what she could not, then stops.

“Is Maggie having the dreams too?”

“...I don’t know.” She blinks, then slumps forward, resting her forehead in her palms. “J’onn, I never asked. I never even asked her.”

He pats her shoulder comfortingly. “Perhaps she’s struggling as much as you.”

“I just want to rest easy,” she sighs.

J’onn sits back, sensing the discomfort rolling off of her in waves. He smiles. “You’ll never rest easy with a four year old to run around after.”

Alex just laughs, relieved. “Just see this.”

She digs out her phone and she shuffles over in the couch for a better view. Together they scroll through photos of Jamie’s latest artistic endeavor and in the innocent creativity of a child, she finds a welcome distraction.

~

Now that they’re both back at work, they set up a cycle. Some days, Jamie is at daycare, other days J’onn or Eliza or Kara babysit. It works well enough, but Maggie finds herself even more eager to get back to the apartment after work on the days when Jamie isn’t with a family member.

She takes the stairs up to Kara’s apartment two at a time, despite the way her head is throbbing. She should have stopped to get her injury properly checked out, but she’d promised Alex she’d be home by six for dinner, and she is already a half hour late.

She’d been sleeping on Kara’s couch regularly for two weeks, but she’s still unsure of where they stand with each other. Irrational thoughts are blows against her temples. Could her tardiness count as a strike against her?  

“Dammit,” she swears under her breath, fumbling with the spare key Alex had given her, nearly falling through the doorway once the door swings open. “Hey, I’m sorry I’m late.”

Jamie runs over to greet her but stops dead, her eyes filling with horror. “You’re hurt!”

“What?” Maggie dabs at the cut on her forehead, her hand coming away wet; it has seeped. “Oh that, it’s nothing-”

Jamie lets out a soft wail, and then she begins to cry, and Maggie freezes, unsure how to react. She hadn’t realised the extent of the injury— she hadn’t even had time to look in a mirror, to wipe off the blood.

Alex rushes over, her gaze flickering between Maggie and Jamie. “Sweetie, what happened?”

“Mommy’s hurt!” Jamie sobs, tears trekking down her cheeks.

Alex looks up, sees the cut, and nibbles her lip. “Okay, okay. But how about we go get a butterfly bandage and make her all better, huh?”

Jamie sniffs, and Alex nods for Maggie to come over to the sink. She rummages through a drawer and produces a Band-Aid, muttering an apology as she sets about cleaning the cut. Maggie hisses as the peroxide makes contact with the wound. Jamie peeks up at the procedure over the kitchen counter, so she turns up the dramatics, hissing like she’s in a lot of pain.

In that childish way, Jamie splutters through her tears, the hint of a smile coming through, so Maggie keeps doing it, joking that Alex is being too rough with her.

“Dr Danvers, am I gonna live?”

“Mmmm…” Alex pauses, “I think so. Only one thing left to do.”

She jerks her head down towards Jamie, so Maggie hoists her up onto her hip. “You wanna kiss it better?”

Jamie sniffs, nods, and then kisses the plaster.

“Wow. All healed.” Maggie smiles at Jamie’s coy look, her eyelashes still wet. She reaches up to thumb away another stray tears from her flushed cheek. “I don’t even feel it anymore.”

Content with that, Jamie wiggles down and back to play on the floor with a puzzle box J’onn bought her, and when she’s out of sight, Alex comes over and mumbles, “Lemme get a real look, now.”

She pulls Maggie into the kitchen and illuminates the torch on her phone, carefully cupping Maggie’s cheek and tilting her towards the light. She scans Maggie’s face for any signs of concussion.

“What happened?” she murmurs.

“Suspect got one in, I stumbled, smacked my head on a shelf in his apartment.”

Alex makes a disapproving noise, waving her phone back and forth to check Maggie’s pupils.

“I’m okay,” Maggie insists, trying to turn her head towards Jamie. She’ll be fine, she just needs to make sure that Jamie is-

“Stay still,” Alex chastises her, trying to grab her attention so she can check her eye movement, but again Maggie tries to look over at their daughter.

“I didn’t expect her to get so upset.”

Alex’s hands are firm as they frame Maggie’s face, keeping her still. “Of course she’s upset, she saw her mom hurt.”

Maggie considers that; she has seen Jamie upset before, when she’s tired and grumpy because she’s skipped a nap, or when she wants to eat something different than Alex has prepared for dinner. She’s even seen the tantrums when she doesn’t want Maggie to leave for work in the mornings.

She and Alex have been able to handle those bumps in the road so far, but this is new territory. This was a Jamie she hadn’t seen.

What will happen when Jamie gets older? When things get harder? When kisses no longer can heal all wounds?

Could she handle that?

Could they?

“Maggie, are you okay?” Alex’s concerned voice brings her back to reality.

And reality is astounding. Alex’s palms are warm against her cheek, their bodies close enough to brush. As if sobering to their state, Alex’s eyes glance down to her lips, mouth parting just so, head tipping incrementally—

_Ping!_

The announcement of the oven timer flings them apart.

Maggie swallows the lump in her throat. They’d been so close and this time, she didn’t feel conflicted. She’d wanted to kiss Alex.

Knees weak, she takes a seat next to their daughter at the table and tries to calm the rapid beating of her heart.

It’s a domestic scene— Alex plating out dinner for herself and Maggie, then serving up some dinosaur nuggets and vegetables for Jamie. The kid turns her nose up at them, but as soon as she sees Maggie munching on her own broccoli, she reluctantly follows.

She steals glances at Alex all through dinner, unable to keep those intrusive thoughts at bay. Together, she and Alex can handle anything life throws at them. Co-parenting Jamie has shown her that. But if Alex is gonna be with her those years, will other women be in the picture?

She thinks about how quickly they’d jumped apart, and yet they’d naturally fallen into that intimacy because Alex had been concerned about her. It felt natural, being like that with Alex.

After dinner, they fall into the familiar rhythm of their family routine, the near kiss almost forgotten. Jamie helps Alex take the dishes to the sink, then Maggie washes each pan.

Then, when It’s bath time, Maggie makes the mistake of forgetting the bath song, even though Alex tried to quickly coach her on each verse. Still, even soaking wet from being splashed, she’s content.

Alex shakes her head fondly at the state of Maggie’s t-shirt, presenting her with a dry one from her drawer.

Maggie flaps it out. “Oh, not _Resort World ‘04?_ ”

Alex ducks her head. “It’s yours.”

Studying the design, she sees she’s right. It’s one she’d gotten for completing the NCPD 5k for charity last year. “You kept it?”

“You left it-” Alex’s hands dance round her hips. “Behind, actually.”

Maggie’s heart swells with hope. She’d left it behind when she’d hurried to pack all of her things into that tiny duffel bag. Alex could have thrown it away when she moved her clothes to Kara’s, but she didn’t. The t-shirt moved with her.

She looks down at the shirt again, and she knows in that moment that she still loves Alex. Right then, she still loves her. She crumples the material in her fists, meeting Alex’s gaze. “Listen-”

_“MOMMY!”_

Jamie’s voice carries into the bathroom and they both shoot off to find out what’s wrong, only to find her tucked under her covers in the camp bed, a cute smile on her face. “Story?”

They share a look, and smile, and they both sit with her and read by the lamplight— Maggie still in the wet shirt.

~

_She turns to her wife, still so beautiful, even as they cower together on the bathroom floor of their house. They could have gone to the DEO— the lead lined walls may have even bought them a few more hours— but if they had to go, they wanted it to be in the place where they shared all those wonderful memories._

_All of their firsts._

_She takes her wife’s hand, the metal of her wedding ring brushing against the sweat of their joined fingers. She won’t let go. Not now. Not ever._

_They’d made a promise to each other._

_The ground shakes, fire rains from the sky._

_She pulls her wife close, pressing their lips together._

_They’d have all of their lasts here too-_

Maggie shoots up, eyes flying open. She claws at the blanket covering her legs, scrambling up off the couch. The fabric is thin but it’s so heavy. Suffocating. She can’t breathe.

She looks around wildly, the blues of dawn casting shadows across the room-

“You’re alright, you’re okay.”

Alex is there. Her voice is soft. It sounds so far away, as if through water.

“I-I-” She chokes, her heart is pounding so brutally against her breastbone that she feels it’s going to burst out and into her lap.

“I know, it’s okay.” Alex holds up a bottle of water, which Maggie takes, gulping it down like she’s been wandering the desert parched.

She’s struggling to focus, the heat licks at her skin, reds and flames dance at the edges of her vision, but this apartment is cool, and quiet.

“The screaming is the worst part,” Alex admits, fisting her hands together. She’s kneeling by the couch.

 _The screaming. Men and women and children just outside their window._ Maggie’s head whips towards her in surprise. “You too?”

“Yeah, me too.”

The water goes down messily, rivulets running down her chin. She’s trying to savour the cool liquid in her throat, trying to separate that sensation from the dry, rasping throat in her nightmare.

“I hope it was quick, for them, I mean,” Maggie says, throat raw.

“I think…” Alex looks off, haunted. “I hope it was, too.”

She takes the last sips of water, her pulse slowing, and feels sheepish. She’d woken Alex up. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Alex shifts so she’s more comfortable. The clock on the wall reads 4:37 am. “You did this countless nights for me.”

The images flicker through Maggie’s mind like old film.

The other Alex and Maggie were married. She shivers, still feeling the slick slide of their gold bands against their sweating, over-heated skin.

She pushes that away to concentrate on the real memory, not the nightmare: she and Alex sitting together reading Jamie’s bedtime story earlier that night.

When they’d gone through their evening routine, Alex had kissed Jamie’s forehead and left the camp bed. They’d been so gentle with each other as they said their goodnights, as if it was weighted, like their conversation wasn’t over but they didn’t know how to continue it.

But that other Alex and Maggie…

They went to bed together. They likely curled up in _their_ bed, in their own room and held each other as they drifted off to sleep— the same way Maggie wishes that Alex would hold her now.

The same way she used to.

The difference is they were together then. She’d hold Alex through the panic attacks, ground her back into reality, breathe with her and reassure her that she wasn’t drowning,

Still, she knows that if Alex needed it now, she’d be there in an instant.

“It’s different, going from icy water to fire,” Alex says, “No more enjoyable, though.”

Maggie reaches out, catching Alex’s fingers which are toying with a thread from the discarded blanket. The skin is cool, not like the nightmare, and it helps her settle further. “Thank you.”

She sees the dawn in Alex’s eyes, the shadows of the apartment watching them carefully. Alex nods sharply and then extracts herself. In her absence, Maggie’s skin prickles into gooseflesh.

“Try and get some more sleep,” Alex says, shuffling back towards her bed.

Maggie leans down to retrieve the blanket, wrapping it tightly around herself to stave off the early morning chill. She looks at the divider between the bedroom area and the living room, then lays back on the couch. It is unlikely she’ll be able to get to sleep.

She spends the hours of dawn brushing against the band-aid on her forehead where Jamie’s lips had kissed the plaster.

Remembering Alex’s warm touch against her cheeks, Maggie wonders if a simple kiss could heal the wounds they’d inflicted on each other too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let us know what you thought!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of your feedback has been amazing thank you from us both! And...please don't shout at us for this...

Eliza Danvers first met her granddaughter the morning after Alex took Jamie home.

Alex had known that she couldn’t wait forever to tell her about Jamie— it had been clear from the home videos how much Jamie adored her grandmother— but she still hadn’t known how to begin. She had dialed the phone once, then twice, jabbing the crimson _‘End Call’_ button both times after the anxiety overwhelmed her.

Telling Kara had been easy. J’onn even more so. But her mother…

They had a pattern of avoiding the bubbling pot of their problems until it spilled over in a confrontation.

Having a parent die would be a hardship on any family. Burdens would be shifted, responsibilities restructured. But the Danvers family had kept a secret, one that could endanger them all if it were to be discovered. When Jeremiah died the task of keeping an alien sister safe fell to fourteen year old Alex.

She was pushed even harder to make sure Kara fit in, pushed to succeed, to excel, to realign her priorities to be centered around her mother’s expectations. In the end, it had sent her on a downward spiral.

She had recovered with J’onn’s token of faith, had excelled and succeeded and realigned her priorities for the better. Now, as an adult, the truth of her job and her sexuality had brought her and her mother closer, as so often hard truths do.

They had a healthier relationship now than Alex could ever remember them having since Jeremiah ‘died’.  

Which is why when her mother had called back, all it had taken was an _Alex, sweetheart, is everything alright?_ for the deluge to come. The entire story came pouring out and finally Alex could breathe.

The pod, the child, the genetic test, _Maggie_.

The exhaustion had seeped into her bones after relating the story once more. Each time she spun the tale, another layer of her sanity felt like it had been stripped off, leaving her raw. Alex protested when Eliza wanted to come right away, insisting they were fine; her, Kara, the girl.

Especially the girl.  

Eliza had ignored Alex and drove through the night anyway.  

In the morning, with no sleep, she stood stunned at the sight of Jamie, even as the girl’s eyes widened in delight at her presence. She wasn’t afforded a single moment to show her exhaustion as Jamie launched herself up from breakfast.

But even though her focus had been on Jamie, even though the situation was bizarre, Alex caught how Eliza’s eyes had shone with pride.

After the first visit, mother and daughter had fallen into a new routine of talking on the phone at least twice a week. They’d always had a lot in common— maybe too much at times— but motherhood was a shared experience that finally enabled them to bond. Alex lapped up all the advice she could get.

And of course, after the first meeting, it had been hard to keep Eliza away. She had visited again not long after Alex and Jamie moved into Kara’s apartment.

“Grandma!” Jamie had called, running across Kara’s apartment in mere seconds and latching onto Eliza’s knees.

Maggie had been there that time, laughing and shaking her head fondly at Jamie’s enthusiasm.

Eliza had taken in the face of the girl, then Alex, then Maggie, and finally back to Jamie.

“My,” she had marvelled, letting Alex take her bag and then picking up the girl to prop her on her hip. She had gently lifted the brown hair away from Jamie’s checks, and Alex had watched as her mother drank in each detail, each genetic marker, all pointing to the fact that the story she had been told was true all along. This child was genetically, biologically, her granddaughter.

She tickled Jamie’s stomach. “You’re full of beans this morning.”

Jamie had grinned from ear to ear, familiar dimples prominent on her cheeks.

Jamie had jumped down from her grandma’s arms to retrieve Officer Pickles, and Eliza had greeted Maggie warmly, politely, as if they were being reacquainted. It was a new beginning for all of them.

Alex felt that heaviness again, being in the presence of family. She lifted her mother’s bag and put it out of the way, lest she be stuck in one spot forever.

This time, the third time Eliza visits, Alex answers the door alone. She opens the door slowly, putting her finger to her lips and motioning over to where Maggie and Jamie are snoozing on the couch.

Eliza follows her daughter to the island, pulling her into a hug. “How are you?” she whispers.

“Good.” Alex takes her bag from her shoulder, placing it on the counter. She pulls two glasses from the cabinet, holding one up in a silent question. Eliza nods and she fills both with water. “How was the drive?”

“Fine. Some traffic on the outskirts, but other than that no delays.”

They stare at the sleeping pair on the couch. The snores indicate that both are fast asleep, tuckered out from a Saturday morning at the park.

Eliza unclasps her briefcase, trying not to knock the brass pins too hard, and pulls out a report. “As you requested.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Alex had forgotten that she even asked her mother to take a look at the genetic sequencing. She’d run the preliminary tests herself at the DEO— just the basic STR results to determine parentage— but she hadn’t had the time to devote to the full analysis, not when she wanted to focus on Jamie.

“I’ve been putting together some theories on how it was done,” Eliza says, “Initially I assumed there were mixed genes from two eggs, with a third party sperm sample, but there’s no indication of any other genetic contributor.”

Alex flips the report, unsure how to handle the statement. Her natural curiosity meant she wanted to know how it came to be that her daughter carried genes from both her mothers. She kept up with the scientific literature, so she knew at some point it would be a possibility, maybe even in her lifetime, but to have Jamie _solely_ be theirs, the news is life-affirming in some way.

If the other Alex was like her, and she very much seemed to be, perhaps she and Maggie had gone to their Eliza with an idea. A scientific theory they hoped they could make reality.

Alex scans through the pages, skimming the data. She’s trying to listen while her mother talks about stem cells and differentiation, but her mind wanders.

Once they were successful, how did the other Alex break the news of their pregnancy? Who carried her? Did she and her Maggie invite Eliza over for dinner to share the news? Did she refuse a glass of wine with a teasing look at her wife, hoping their family would catch on?

However it happened on that other Earth, this situation was different to _this_ Earth. She wasn’t half of a couple, excited to share the news of a planned pregnancy, but a freshly single woman who had suddenly found herself with a four-year-old belonging to an alternate version of herself and her ex-fiancée.

Still, it’s an intimacy, albeit a scientific one; the blending of their DNA to create this new life.

“This is- I mean, this is incredible,” Alex manages, rifling through the pages once more.  

Eliza drains her glass and it clinks against the marble counter as she sets it back down. A stuttered snore rises from the couch and Maggie shifts at the noise, but remains asleep.

“How are you and Maggie?” Eliza asks quietly.

“Fine.” Alex follows her mother’s gaze, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Her mother hums. “I mean, it must be difficult, spending so much time together.”

Alex twitches, fingers fiddling with the edge of a report. She should have known this was coming, but she and her mother had been getting along so well recently, she hadn’t thought to prepare herself for the cycle of disappointment that historically characterized their relationship.

“It hasn’t been as hard as I thought. Maggie is a great mom, for someone who didn’t wanna have a kid.”

Eliza remains focused on the two figures on the couch. Jamie squirms in her sleep and Maggie’s arm tightens around her, keeping her from falling over the edge of the couch. “Has she found someone new?”

The thought of it pangs straight to her heart. “No.”

“Have you?” Her mother turns to her then, mouth drawn, serious.

“No, Mom. Why are you asking me this?” She’s frustrated, voice rough from trying to keep it low. Her mother loves her, she knows that even if she hasn’t always agreed with her daughter’s decisions, but this line of questioning is almost too much.

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” Eliza says, “But if you broke up with her over future parenthood, and now you’ve found yourselves being parents…”

“It’s not like that.” Alex deflates, staring down at the reports. “I feel...guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“I just…” Alex trails off.

Having a child should be something agreed on by both parties. Something they both want. And even if Maggie has chosen to be a mother— _wanted_ to be Jamie’s mother—  Maggie had to give up so much. Her free time. Her ability to take the harder, more dangerous cases.

Eliza gives her a small, understanding smile. She plays with the strap of her bag, thumb tracing out a figure of eight, and then, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but you were an accident.”

Alex blinks, dropping the reports with a whoosh to the island. “I’m sorry, what?” she squeaks, as quietly as she can so as not to wake Maggie and Jamie.

"You were planned, but not when you came.” Eliza shrugs, embarrassed to admit it. “Your father and I married, and promised we wouldn’t have children until we were in a comfortable enough position both professionally and financially to support a child _and_ a successful career. That applied to both of us, I mean.” She gestures to herself. “We were thinking maybe five, six years into our marriage. Maybe longer. As you know, I met your father in college, and we were young when we married so...”

Alex nods, listening intently. She’s heard the story of how her parents met. When her father died, her mother stopped talking about those good days. Stopped talking to Alex much at all about anything other than school and Kara. Alex knows now— after those long months of mourning her failed engagement— that it hurt her too much when she was grieving her husband.

“But one day I got very sick, and well, I was pregnant. If you thought birth control is unreliable now, you should have experienced it thirty years ago.”

Alex mutes a laugh behind her hand, the kind that bursts out when there’s no other reaction available. It never gets any less strange to talk about these things with her mother. Not even at thirty. Some topics will always make her feel like an awkward teenager.

Glossy eyes grow distant with memory. “I was scared.”

“Scared?”

“To tell your father. He’d been adamant that we were going to succeed together. That science was our child for the meantime. I wondered if he might even want to look away from a test tube long enough to be a father.” Her voice wavers a moment. “But when I told him, Alex, when the shock sank in, he swept me up in his arms and had tears of joy in his eyes.”

Alex looks at Maggie, lying on the couch with their daughter tucked under her chin. No one would ever guess that she’d had any hesitation to have a kid. She has thrown herself into her new normal without looking back.

She imagines their other selves, huddled over a pregnancy test in their bathroom. Was the other Maggie so overcome with happiness that she had cried tears of joy, too?

“I don’t know how to fix it.” The words are shaky, raw. Full of unshed emotion. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how. It’s like the parts we broke in each other wouldn’t fit back together again.”

A hand comes to rest on Alex’s own, stilling the trembling she hadn’t noticed.

“When your father came back, briefly, I warned him that I was a different woman now, that we would have to work hard to get back to anything resembling a relationship, that maybe I didn’t even want that with him anymore.” Eliza shakes her head. “But I lied, Alex. I saw him in the DEO and I was that same 18 year old seeing him in Lab 372 for the first time.”

Those old feelings rushing back to the surface. The love that had never left her heart.

Alex has never related to her mother more than in this moment.

When she sees Maggie puttering around her kitchen in one of her shirts, with that beautiful smile directed her way, she remembers that first morning after. Dropping everything— all their responsibilities— just to bask a little longer in that newfound happiness.

Together, things are becoming so discombobulated, so confusing, and this time, she’s not sure if Maggie will catch her when she falls.

She barely registers her mother speaking again.

“He spent a semester in Switzerland, and it was so hard being apart from him, even at that early time,” she says, wistful, “He kept writing me letters, and there’s this one where he talks about a theoretical physics lecture he just undertook. They discussed theories of different timelines and universes. He was fascinated.”

Alex has proof of these theories. She may not have met the Alex on Earth One or the Alex from Earth X, but she knows of one other Alex. Her parallel self that had entrusted her with her most precious thing— her daughter.

Eliza continues, misty now, twisting her wedding ring around her finger. “At the end of that letter he says, it doesn’t matter if there are ten more or ten thousand more, I’m with you in every single one.”

“Mom,” Alex chokes. Her father had always been a sap for the women in his life, but that’s just about the most romantic thing she’s heard. For a precious few seconds, it cuts through Cadmus, through the experiences of his betrayal, and she is fifteen, stifling her grief into her pillow, missing her father.

Her mother gathers herself, smiling despite the bittersweet memories. “What I mean is, there is an Earth where you were married, where you had a child with that woman over there.” She points at Maggie, then taps the report. “Don’t give up on that proof just because things seem hard, or you’re afraid to upset the status quo.”

It would be so easy to fall back into old patterns with Maggie, but if things don’t work out, it doesn’t just affect them.

“We have Jamie to think about,” Alex says.

Sensing her anxieties, Eliza covers Alex’s hand with her own, patting it lightly. “Which is why I’m saying you must take your chance.”

If the theories her father postulated were true, there’s an Alex in a hundred other universes, each with their own Maggie.

The thought makes her shiver.

Her great grandparents were young sweethearts, both immigrants, who had been newly married when the war broke out. He had been sent to Germany to fight on the front lines and she had been left behind with their young daughter, Josephine.

Decades later, well into her eighties, she would rock back and forth in the care home’s chair and tell Alex stories of listening to the radio each night, hearing the atrocities of war, and worrying that one day, she might receive his last letter. But she kept up hope, and one day he did return, and it didn’t matter that he was missing a leg and could no longer work as many hours to support them, because they were together.

They were soulmates, she would tell Alex. _Bashert_.

Alex picks up the graphs again. Her mother was right about one thing: Jamie was proof that in one universe at least, she and Maggie worked out.

 _“Bashert”,_ she murmurs, running her fingertips over Maggie’s genetic profile, “destined to be.”

~

Eliza picks Jamie up early one Saturday morning. It’s Jamie’s first night alone with her grandmother, without the presence of her mothers. Alex knows she doesn’t have anything to worry about— Jamie is thrilled to spend the night in Midvale and Supergirl is only a few minutes away in an emergency— but she still hugs her daughter extra tight as she says goodbye.

It’s the first time in two months she’s without her.

(In a moment of pure impulse, she gives Officer Pickles a hug too. Jamie approves, glad he’s included in the goodbye).

When Maggie decides to stay, even though there’s no need to keep up appearances, Alex is thankful for more than just her help in tidying the apartment.

Even with the simmering tension between them, their relationship has mended.

Awkward mornings have become brighter as Maggie made Alex laugh over stacks of happy face pancakes. They found themselves talking more frequently, getting to grips with coparenting. Polite texts back and forth mushroomed back into their banter; Alex asking Maggie if she had seen Jamie’s red sneakers turning to Alex joking that Maggie’s feet were so small Jamie could probably borrow a pair of her boots for daycare.  

As the days went on and they grew comfortable in their new roles, they found themselves slipping back into old routines, sending each other _good morning_ on the days Maggie couldn’t join them at the breakfast table and sharing silly anecdotes about coworkers and mutual acquaintances.

Two months after Jamie crashed into their lives, they had become best friends again.

Maggie finishes placing the last of the dishes from breakfast into the dishwasher and joins her in the living room. It’s practically a warzone, strewn with dolls and plush toys, but Alex finds herself less bothered by clutter than she used to be.

“Are you coming to Kara’s party tonight?” She asks as she picks up the Rubik’s Cube that once lived on Maggie’s desk at work, the colorful stickers peeling at the edges. Jamie had taken a shine to it on the last visit to the precinct and it had traveled home with them. She spins the bottom around, white to blue, hoping to ease her nerves. “It’ll be weird attending a party in my own apartment.”

“Am I coming?” Maggie repeats, looking up from the open case file in front of her.

“Yeah. You’re invited.” Alex places the puzzle into Jamie’s toy box and pushes it back into the corner of the living room. “You should come.”

“Kara did ask but, are you sure?” Maggie collects the pages they’d been working on the previous night, clearing Kara’s tabletop. She neatly shuffles them inside and runs her fingers along the edge of the folder. “I don’t wanna...intrude or anything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alex says, her tone jovial, “It’ll be like old times.”

They arrive together, and though Kara had been frosty to Maggie in the beginning, she beams when she opens the door. Immediately, she pulls them both in for a hug, hooking around their necks.

As she stands back, she gives a cheery, “Maggie, hey! I’m glad you came.”

“Hey. You’ve made this place a little less doom and gloom,” Maggie appraises, ignoring Alex’s eyeroll.

“Well, fairy lights and finger sandwiches go a long way.”

Maggie grins. “Actually, I forgot to text you earlier. Alex is working on Tuesday, but I was hoping to take Jamie to the zoo finally. You wanna come?”

Kara grins, rocking back on her heels. “Snacks and drinks and sing-a-longs in the car with my niece all included?”

Maggie narrows her eyes, but her smile betrays her. “Yes. But I object to _Gummy and Benzy’s_ theme tune. Once it’s stuck in my head, it’s there for hours.”

“Deal.” Kara holds her hand out to shake.

They all separate to mingle in the crowd. Alex stands in the centre of her apartment and slowly turns, seeing the changes Kara has made while she’s been living here. Maggie is right, it is less doom and gloom. It seems airy, and brighter, though she can’t pinpoint any extra sources of light.

While Maggie is briefly distracted by James, Alex swoops back over to Kara. “How come you weren’t this friendly when I was actually _dating_ Maggie?” She jabs her in the arm with her elbow. “Could have made my life a lot easier.”

“Maggie buys my affection with snacks now.” Kara keeps her face straight and guarded, but it’s not enough to mask her humour.

When Maggie rejoins her, they make the rounds, waltzing in and out of various people they know, exchanging hellos and making small talk. Nia arrives soon after they do, and immediately catches Maggie in a conversation about a television show they both watch. Alex hangs back a bit, listening to them speculate about some plot point or another, enjoying the ambience as she surveys the room.

Kara is still playing hostess by the door, smiling and directing her guests towards the drinks table, which accumulates more alcohol as each new person arrives. There’s already a good assortment of alien beverages, and it’s probably good that Kara doesn’t have to fly home tonight.

J’onn enters, a bottle of Coexistence in hand and Kara greets him effusively. He catches Alex’s eye and she watches as his gaze flicks to Maggie and back to her. She recognizes the look of silent approval, but she isn’t ready to address how that makes her feel.

She excuses herself, shuffling through a small group towards the edge of the room for a bit of air. She doesn’t recognize most of the people in her apartment, and she still doesn’t feel entirely comfortable in crowds. Years later, she still remembers those hazy nights filled with thumping music, alcohol and who knows what else pumping through her veins.

She leans back against the wall and searches for Maggie in the crowd. She’s laughing at Nia’s story, how she’s moving wildly about and acting out the scene. Alex is glad she’s laughing, because the last time she was in this apartment-

She closes her eyes, trying to push away Cyndi Lauper and tequila and desperate kisses, and instead drown in the rowdy crowd atmosphere.

When she opens her eyes, Maggie greets Brainy and then leaves him and Nia. She weaves her way through the partygoers to where Alex is leaning up against the wall.

She’s probably imagining the way Maggie’s shoulders relax when she finds her.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Maggie joins her, slumping back against the wall and running a hand through her hair. “It’s crazy in here.”

“Who knew Kara had so many friends.”

Maggie laughs, and then sets her hand on Alex’s arm. “Stay right here and I’ll get us drinks.”

“Finally, I’m parched with the talking.”

Her gaze follows Maggie through the crowd, meaning Kara startles her when she appears.

“Hey, you okay?”

Alex nods, slipping her hands into her pockets. “Yeah, just waiting on Maggie to come back over.”

Kara gives her a knowing look. “How is that, by the way?”

“You tell me, since you’re best friends now.” She bumps Kara’s toe with her own, softening the sarcastic jibe.

“Playing dumb never suited you, Alex.” Kara sips her drink and gives her _sister eyes_. “You and Maggie doing great as parents, but if you’re planning on getting back together-”

“There’s no plans-” Alex glances up, seeing Maggie talking with J’onn at the drinks table. “There’s just...”

Kara bumps her toe back. “Just be careful, okay?”

She leaves Alex before she can come up with a good retort, and Alex almost moves to follow her to have the last word, but Maggie is sporting a Cheshire grin as she saunters back over, two glasses in hand and a bottle of something under her arm.

The bottle is her favorite scotch, the one she had hidden away from Kara in the cabinet under the island last Thanksgiving.

“You remembered,” Alex says, taking the bottle and cradling it to read the label.

With a teasing look, Maggie takes her free hand and pulls her further away from the center of the room. She pours them both a healthy amount of liquor, Alex can’t help but glance nervously around the room to see if Kara is watching them, but there’s no sign of blonde hair.

They tap their glasses together, and finally, _finally_ Alex is able to relax as the alcohol works its way through her system, warming her body from her head to her toes.

It’s definitely the alcohol, not the way Maggie is standing so close in their secluded corner.

She takes another swig just to prove it.

They make idle chatter about the party. Which of Kara’s colleges might be gay, and which ones might secretly be aliens. Whether Kara has swapped out the pillows on Alex’s couch or if they’ve always been there.

The lights dim and the edges of her vision blur as more and more people arrive, and soon Alex finds that she doesn’t quite care about where her sister is or how strange it feels to be standing in her own apartment surrounded by strangers. Not when Maggie’s thumb is slowly stroking her arm, centering her. They’re in their own bubble, completely focused on each other.

The rest of the party is just white noise.

She’s been thinking about moments like this for weeks. Their near kiss in the kitchen. All the times she’s laid in bed, memories of the times spent wrapped up in each other playing on repeat. All that time, she’s had Jamie there to quell any impulse, romantic or otherwise.

But she doesn’t have to behave tonight, their daughter isn’t here.

In a room full of people, she’s finally alone with Maggie.

_They have a daughter._

“I never wanted kids. Never, you know this.” Maggie illustrates this point with a wave of her glass, then takes a sip, continuing, “But Alex, I’d give my life for that kid.”

“You’re a great mom.” Maggie snorts at the comment so Alex repeats, “Really, you’re a great mom.”

Maggie shrugs, ducking her head, embarrassed maybe, but proud. “She’s gonna be a handful when she goes to school.”

Alex just smiles. If Jamie is anything like them, she’ll be exceptional. “Nah. She’s gonna be smart.”

Maggie’s fingers brush the denim on Alex’s hip, flirting with the boundaries. Alex doesn’t back off, doesn’t push the touch away.

“I can’t believe she’s us, y’know?” A shake of the head, awed. “I mean, she’s my blood relative.”

It comes as no surprise to Alex that this fact affects her. Maggie lost her aunt to cancer three years before they’d met, and all of her other blood relatives may as well not be— and now, Maggie has this biological link to someone again. It doesn’t negate found family, but it’s significant.

That information causes Maggie to grown quiet. Alex can see her contemplate this, as if she’d not really spoken the fact aloud before. Without thinking, she reaches out, tracing the line of her jaw with her thumb, the way she used to after her ex’s toughest days, and Maggie leans into the touch.

“She’s been gifted with your hair,” Alex says, tucking it behind one of Maggie’s ears, guiding the conversation to a less heavy topic.

A small smile. She’s back down to Earth. Alex doesn’t remove her hand. “I don’t think it’s a gift when you’ve gotta pry the tangles out.”  

They both laugh. They’d sat with Jamie just a few nights prior after a bath, Alex rubbing her back to soothe the whimpers as Maggie slowly worked a brush through thick curls.

“We have a kid,” Alex repeats her thought from before, stretching into a silly grin. The alcohol warms her stomach, or perhaps it’s the way Maggie’s eyes meet hers.

“We do.”

Alex holds up her glass for another toast and they both drain their drinks mid-giggle.

“You definitely carried her.”

Maggie pauses as she’s pouring them each another drink. “What- why?!”

“Cause you could be all cute and cranky and make me give you foot rubs.”

They’re mere inches apart when Maggie hands back her glass. She can’t believe that the last time they were in this apartment together, she said _We can’t be together_ , and now they’re at a place where they can joke about who would have been the pregnant one.

They’re not respecting the unspoken boundaries they have around Jamie. They’re pushing at them with every touch, every inch shuffled closer.

“Hey, she’s got your dimples…”

This third glass of scotch gives Alex the courage to reach her own hand back up to Maggie’s face, her fingers tracing dimples she still sees in her sleep. Dimples that are mirrored on her daughter’s cheeks.

Maggie sways a little closer, murmuring, "She's got your eyes."

Alex hums, playing with Maggie’s hair. Her mood is heady, ignoring the people around them, ignoring the warnings in her head.

Maggie glances at her lips, sets her glass on a surface beside them, and whispers, “I’ve always loved your eyes.”

It’s a compliment that has been paid to her hundreds of times. On shared crime scenes. On the couch, bathed in the blue light of a forgotten documentary.

In bed.

It comes out like a prayer now. A plea. Maggie’s own eyes are lidded but searching, darkened with intent.

She knows that look.

She can’t resist.

She doesn’t want to.

Alex closes the distance between them.

The kiss isn’t desperate, not at all like the reunion kiss she imagined on all those lonely nights spent wondering if she’d made the wrong decision. It’s soft. Warm. Passionate, but longing.

Their first kiss in the bar was a hurricane.

This is a gentle summer rain.

Alex holds tight to her scotch glass, lest it slip through her fingers and smash the world open with this development. Her other hand cups Maggie’s cheek, caressing as they continue to kiss.

Eventually, she rests her forehead against Maggie’s and the other woman places her hands on Alex’s hips. The edges of the world are a fuzzy, the dozen other voices just a muffled haze. Just for a brief moment they can forget about all of their history and just be in the moment.

“It’s so hard, because it’s so easy.”

The words come out a little slurred. She’s not drunk, she knows that, but she’s tipsy enough to have let things get a little too far.

“What-”

“It’s so easy being with you, with Jamie,” Alex clarifies, “It’s easy to pretend it’s the three of us.”

Maggie clicks on to what she means. “And that’s why it’s so hard.”

_Because we’re not really together._

Alex nods at the conclusion, pulling back. She turns away, snaking through the crowd and affording them distance.

Maggie goes back to her apartment, Alex goes to Kara’s, not chancing a good night. She slumps against the cab window, city lights blurring with her tears. She’s been selfish, kissing Maggie and then pushing her away. She was weak enough kissing Maggie in the first place.

She’s still too in love.

She wakes the next morning to the scrape of a key in the lock. She goes to the kitchen to find Maggie wearing Alex’s old Stanford sweatshirt. It hands slightly off her shoulder, and Alex has to stop herself from rounding the corner of the island and kissing her senseless.

She wants this with Maggie. She wants to spend lazy mornings cuddled up on the couch with a cup of coffee, watching TV and chatting about nothing while they wait for their daughter to return from a sleepover.

But she can’t let herself think that’s a reality.

Maggie has had to give so much already. Alex doesn’t deserve to take anymore.

The other woman rests her forearms on the counter, greeting her with a kind smile, as if their kiss hadn’t happened. “How are you feeling?”

“A little achy, but nothing a pint of water and a couple aspirin won’t fix.” She keeps the island between them, needing the distance. “You?”

“The same.” Maggie fidgets, tapping her fingers against the smooth marble. “Listen, about last night-”

“Let’s…” Alex struggles, drops her hand. “Let’s not, Maggie.”

Tears burn at Alex’s throat at having to give the sudden cold shoulder but she just can’t have this conversation. She is too vulnerable, too selfish, too guilty.  

Maggie looks like she wants to bring it up again, to push at Alex’s hastily built walls until they come tumbling down, but a knock at the door is her savior.

Their daughter is back.

~

A week or so after the party, Alex brings up the idea of buying a house.

Maggie had known this conversation would be coming at some point. They had tried to make Kara’s apartment as homely as possible, but it isn’t the place to raise Jamie. The girl hadn’t complained when she and Alex explained that they would be staying at Aunt Kara’s for a little while, but she deserved a bedroom of her own, maybe even a backyard to run around in.

They’re sitting down at the table, files and bank statements strewn about the surface. They’ve gone over finances before, when Maggie moved in with Alex, but that seems a lifetime ago. This is a whole different kind of intimacy— an adult intimacy— one of credit ratings and salaries.

She looks down at the spreadsheet open on her laptop, the cell containing her meagre detective’s salary staring back at her. Alex’s promotion came with a significant pay raise, and while the DEO had always compensated its employees better than the NCPD, the pay gap had never been this large. Still, Maggie wants to contribute as much as she can, even if she’ll need to cut back on a few things.

She saves the spreadsheet and opens a browser window containing some real estate listings. “Have you thought about where you wanna live?”

“A little.” Alex pushes her reading glasses up onto her forehead. “You?”

Maggie casts her eyes back down to the listing. Ever since Alex said she couldn’t talk about their kiss, she’s been treading very carefully. But she needs to clarify; are they going to live together?

While she may be still paying rent on her apartment downtown, her lease is up in two months.

She tabs through each photo in the listing. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. A finished basement perfect for playing pool.

She knows what she wants.

She wants Alex.

She wants this family.

But even though Alex has been so adamant about wanting her to be in Jamie’s life, she has put this distance between them after their kiss.

She can feel Alex’s eyes on her and tries to lighten up the mood. “I don’t know about neighbourhoods, but I did ask around at work about the best school districts.”

Alex laughs, breaking the tension, and Maggie laughs too, patting her pockets. “No, really, I’ve got a list.”

She produces a wrinkled piece of paper she took down some names on and slides it across the table. Alex’s eyes soften as she scans the list. “Maybe we should look into these areas.”

Maggie feels that tug she’s been trying to push away. Seeing Alex laugh again, seeing how much she’s matured in just a few months, she feels that ache.

It’s worse now that they’ve kissed. She heard what Alex said at the party, about how hard it was to be together but not _be together_. She has experienced the same blurring of then and now. Alex making her coffee and double toasted bagels, ribbing her about an NCPD headline, now with an extra person at the breakfast table.

She watches Alex read the list of areas, how she scrunches her brow trying to recall where they are placed in the surrounding National City area, her stomach in knots.

She wants badly to respect Alex’s request for the kiss to be dropped, but she needs to know if they’re going to have a chance together.

It badgers her for a few days, that longing to belong, to be enough for Alex.

Yet even with this calamity of thoughts, they fit seamlessly together, Alex busying herself in the kitchen, while Maggie showers and gets dressed. Maggie emerges from the bathroom, hair still wet, taking the knife Alex had been using to cut up apple slices so that Alex can take her turn. All the while Jamie follows them around like a little duckling until they plant her on the couch in front of the TV watching Paw Patrol.

They’re almost ready, when Alex calls over her shoulder, “Jamie, are your shoes on?”

A beat. “Yes.”

Alex pauses mid-motion, and then uses the harder mothering tone she’s learning to have day by day, “Jamie. Are your shoes on?”

“...No.”

“Can you please put them on.”

“Can’t find them.”

Maggie knows that sound is just a few sharp words away from the brink of a tantrum, but then she genuinely can’t find them. The three of them spend twenty minutes combing through the apartment for the light-up sneakers until they compromise and go for another pair instead.

Their lives are so entangled and not just at home. They’re working together too, and not just casually discussing cases after Jamie goes to bed. Now they carpool to work, spending the time chatting about the particularities of parenting.

Maggie drums on the steering wheel of Alex’s DEO-issued vehicle. “What about Grenvale?”

“No.”

“What don’t you like about it?”

“The property prices, for one.”

Maggie snorts. “True.”

They’re sitting in traffic looking at some of the family-cars, the bigger ones with kids squabbling in the back, on the school run. Jamie hasn’t started school yet, but perhaps that’s something they should think about too. They’ve been sharing Alex’s car— they couldn’t very well put a car seat in the back of a police cruiser— and while the black sedan is practical for city driving, the extra space would be nice if and when Jamie wanted to start a sport.

Maggie pulls up to the curb a block from the DEO and they both pause. Alex looks at her blankly and Maggie frowns. They’re both waiting for something, but neither of them are sure what it is. A goodbye kiss on the cheek, maybe. Like they used to.

“I-uh- thanks for the ride.” Alex awkwardly shoulders her bag and shuffles out with a wave.

Maggie doesn’t get time to ponder it too much— Alex calls about an hour later and asks a favour— they’re planning a raid and she doesn’t trust their intelligence.

Ever since she became Director, she’s been extra cautious, bordering on paranoid, and Maggie sifts through her contacts for any information that might confirm or deny her suspicions. In the afternoon, Maggie meets her at a sandwich shop, one of their usual haunts.

“Your intel checks out.”

Alex is relieved. “Good.” She jerks a thumb at the counter. “Sandwich for your trouble?”

“Sure. Same as always.”

Alex’s lips twitch into a smile. Maggie’s stomach is doing those turns again and it’s not because she’s hungry. They slide into a booth, like they’ve done a dozen times before.

“Hey, you could also let me in on the raid, for my trouble,” Maggie suggests, halfway through her sub.

Alex shakes her head. “No. We can’t risk both of us now.”

Last week she had been sleeping soundly on the couch when she’d been woken by the pinging of the microwave. She had rubbed the sleep from her eyes and crept into the kitchen, only to find Alex sheepishly sipping at a glass of warm milk. She had tried to catch it before the timer ran down to zero, but she’d gotten distracted by the remnants of her nightmare.

Huddled together by the counter, Alex mumbled through the events of her dream— the screaming, the heat licking at her skin, the blank eyed stare of their deceased alternate selves— all the while Maggie longed to hold her close, stroke her hair.

They had both agreed that they didn’t want to leave Jamie an orphan again.

Still, Maggie continues, “I understand, and I agree. But this is a pretty medium-risk set piece, and you know it.”

Alex deliberates over a piece of lettuce that has fallen from her sandwich onto the paper wrapping, and then concedes.

They’ve always worked better together.

That night, when she gets back to Kara’s apartment after hours of paperwork, she finds Alex crouching behind an armchair, Officer Pickles under one arm and a dollar store water pistol in the other hand. It’s a strange mirror of their mission earlier in the day, except this time Alex is filled with childlike glee rather than coiled tension and strength.

She’s always loved watching Alex work.

Agent Danvers always rises to the occasion, and she proved that again today when she wrestled an alien three times her size to the ground single-handedly.

But this is different than taking down a drug cell with the DEO or engineering an alien vaccine. She looks just as comfortable with a stuffed otter as she does with a rocket launcher and Maggie is just as attracted to her now, teasing their daughter, as she is when Alex is packing heat.

“No, Pickles!” Jamie wails from across the room, pulling Maggie from her thoughts, “How could you?”

Alex pretends Pickles is whispering in her ear and she shrugs, shooting Maggie a sly wink. “The money was too good.”

Jamie straightens up, tiny hands on her hips, and Maggie notices then that she’s draped in a very familiar Police windbreaker. “Give up!”

“We’ll give up if we can have four Pop Tarts.”

Jamie dashes over to the counter where the Pop Tarts sit, pistol trained on her mother. She pokes through the box, counting them aloud, lifting up a tiny finger for each number, then gasps, “But there’s only three left!”

“Uh oh, Pickles,” Alex says, looking at the toy, “Only three left.”

Eventually they compromise with three Pop Tarts and Mr Fuzzles the purple bear that Kara won her at the fair.

Alex collapses next to Maggie on the couch once Jamie darts off with Pickles for another game.

“She’s almost as good a negotiator as you,” she says.

Maggie nods in agreement, then motions to the neon blue pistol still in Alex’s hand. “We’re introducing our child to guns so soon?”

Alex regards the toy, her forehead wrinkling in thought. “We’re going to need a proper gun locker.”

Maggie resolves to purchase one. Keeping Jamie safe is their number one priority now, and given that she is so acclimated to the precinct and the DEO, she might get curious about guns. She knows the statistics about guns in the home, and she isn’t willing to let Jamie become just another number.

She stays over again that night, as she has every night for the past three weeks. She tosses and turns, and instead of being plagued by nightmares, she falls into a fantasy.

Visions paint the inside of her eyelids. They feel like memories, but she isn’t sure they are. It’s Kara’s apartment, Kara’s bed, but she’s there with a lover. There’s a warm weight over her hips, lips against her neck. This someone leans up, their torso captured by the moonlight as they slide their shirt up higher, and higher, and she knows those scars. She traces up those ribs. A chin tilts, body lowers, she knows that face -

She wakes up, it’s 5am, her heart racing for an altogether other reason than a nightmare. Alex putters around in the kitchen. Maggie’s pulse spiking in her neck, she looks over.

Alex’s shorts are low on her hips, her tank just peeking over her tummy in that old teasing way that drove - drives - Maggie crazy. She’s yawning and shuffling and comfortable and for some reason, Maggie has the urge to go up behind her and embrace her, kiss the knot of her spine, feel the heat still not faded from her bedsheets.   

But she doesn’t.

She pretends to sleep. Just like they’re pretending to play house with Jamie. Putting on an act. Just like the game Alex is playing. God, does Maggie want it to be real.

Alex leaves for her morning run, and for the first time since Jamie appeared in their lives, Maggie is glad to see her go. After a long, very cold shower, Maggie shuffles back to the living room, but stops short as her ears catch Jamie talking softly. She creeps closer, just until she can see the girl curled up on her camp bed.

“Pickles, do you think they-” She stops and sighs, curling up with the toy. “They don’t hug or kiss or anything. And Charlie said when his mommy and daddy stopped hugging, his daddy stopped living in his house.”

Her eyes tear up, her voice growing wobbly. “Will one of my mommies move away?”

Maggie’s stomach drops.

They’d been so careful around Jamie, or so they’d thought; but it seems as if she’s picked up on their tentative vibes anyway.

The next day, she’s in a much better mood, and when she’s distracted by a new colouring book, Maggie pulls Alex aside.

“I heard Jamie getting upset yesterday.”

Alex looks up, alarmed. “What? Why?”

Maggie glances over, making sure their girl is still distracted. “She said we don’t hug or kiss, and she’s worried one of us will move out like her friend’s parents.”

Alex draws up, a mixture of sheepish and awkward, as if she’s not really sure how to go about this. “Okay.” She nods. “Okay…”

Maggie sees she’s struggling. “Should we be more affectionate around her? Or…” she trails off, frustrated. Not at Alex or herself, just the situation. But that’s a whole conversation they can’t have with Jamie in relative earshot. “Are we gonna date other people? What about when she’s older?”

It’s not what she wants to say, but it’s what comes out.

What she wants is to talk about _them_ , about if _they_ have a future, but Alex won’t look her in the eye.

“Maggie, let’s not do this now.”

“We need to talk about this-” She’s begging, pleading, she knows.

“We do.” Alex nods, holding up a hand, eyes glassy. “Just- Not- I can’t, not right now.”

It’s the second time that she has been shut out by Alex and this time hurts more than the first. They had been getting along so well, cohabiting and coparenting seamlessly. They’ve felt like a family.

Conveniently, Alex’s work phones sounds off, the new one she has for communicating with Washington. She picks it up and retreats behind the bedroom divider. Maggie, aimless now, moves towards where Jamie is colouring in.

There is a page half-coloured, and a page not yet touched. The uncoloured page is an animal wedding, all black lines and white spaces, making the smiles seem empty. The scene has no yellow sunshine, no bright outfits, the church has no bricks or features. Even the flowers are blank.

“Why aren’t you colouring this one?” Maggie asks, bending over to point at it.

“Don’t want to,” Jamie says, swinging her legs.

“You don’t want to _yet_ or you don’t…?” She frowns and cuts herself off, pushing down the projection onto her daughter. She crouches down beside her, hanging her head and hands. If Alex told her she wasn’t enough, she couldn’t handle this. Couldn’t do it.

Her worst fears puddle out onto the ground. Alex dating other women, bringing them into the house they had planned, having them around Jamie. Marrying them. Moving on completely until-

A tiny hand pats the crown of her head and she looks up.

“Are you sad cause I won’t colour it?” Jamie asks, changing her crayon to a sky blue, “Cause I will!”

She’s enough.

For this girl, she’s enough.

She realizes it immediately, seeing the sincerity of her daughter’s eyes. She stands, pulling out a chair and shakily sitting down.

“How about I help you?” she suggests, and Jamie wiggles with delight.

“You can have this one,” she says, pushing a crayon in Maggie’s direction.

“Oh yeah?” She picks it up, and begins to colour the giraffe’s suit. “What colour is this?”

“Black.”

“Perfect. And the one you have?”

“Uh…” Jamie shifts this way and that. “Red?”

“Nope. Try again.”

“Uh…” Maggie forms the word _blue_ and Jamie perks up. “Blue!”

“That’s right.” She sees Alex hovering near the divider, arms over her chest, gazing on them with pride. “It’s your mom’s favourite colour.”

Jamie looks to Alex. “Really?”

Alex pushes off the divider, taking the seat opposite Maggie. “It is.”

Maggie shoves away the tension from their interrupted conversation, handing over a yellow crayon. “Wanna help?”

She hesitates, then takes it. “Sure.”

Together, the three of them colour in the wedding. She and Alex might add colour back into their own relationship, but time would tell.

For now, this was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments so far have been amazing! Thank you all for getting in touch about this story. We love hearing from you all.

Her cruiser is a wreck.

It’s completely totaled: scorched into a shell by toxic slime, the acid still eating away at the plastic exterior. She’s lucky she wasn’t inside.

Even from a few feet away, the smell is so rancid it makes her skin crawl.

The DEO agents dressed in special hazmat suits have it handled, so she’s surprised when the Director pulls up with some reinforcements.

Alex climbs off her motorcycle, pulling off her helmet in one fluid motion. Maggie has seen her new uniform many times, but the sight will never get old. Not with the way it hugs her ass at least.

She’s not here as the fierce leader, ready to bark orders and direct a line of fire. Instead she makes a beeline directly towards Maggie, clasping her bicep and scanning her for any burns. “Are you alright? They said it was Flanian discharge."

Maggie forces her eyes to meet Alex’s own. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

Alex looks at the remnants of her car, catching the wisps of fumes from the where the acid melts into the cruiser, and tugs her back a few steps. “And Jamie?”

“Daycare. I left her off, it’s fine,” Maggie rushes to assure her.

Alex nods, finally releasing her bicep. Maggie isn’t offended by the line of questioning. She knows Alex trusts her with Jamie, but since Alex went to work early in the morning, leaving Maggie with the task of dropping Jamie off at daycare, it’s logical that she would need that last confirmation that their daughter wasn’t anywhere near the scene.

She would have asked the same thing.

After cleanup, Alex approaches her once more, disarming Maggie with a shy smile and a spare helmet under her arm. “Hey uh, you need a ride back to the precinct?”

“Yeah, actually.” Maggie watches the DEO lorry lug away, the skeleton of her cruiser tied to the back. “Thanks.”

Alex straddles the bike and fits on her helmet, motioning for Maggie to follow. It’s only when Maggie’s sat on the seat behind her, letting the helmet hang in her hand, that she realizes what’s about to happen.

Alex flips up her visor, sees Maggie’s limp helmet, and turns in question. “Okay?”

Would she be okay? Could she cope with being so close to Alex after her rebuffs?

“Yeah,” Maggie says finally. She pulls on the helmet, shuffles her hips right down against Alex’s as the engine starts, and melts around Alex’s frame.

The subsequent ride downtown is charged, Maggie’s arms low around Alex’s abdomen, the rumble of the motor beneath them. It’s intimate, the physicality of their bodies together. She feels every flex, every breath, every strain of Alex’s muscles, feel the purr of the engine between their legs, every push of Alex’s hips against her own in balance with the bike.

Peeling herself away with a breathy tone of gratitude as they reach the precinct, Maggie wonders if under the helmet, Alex is blushing too.

~

Alex ghosts through the halls of the DEO towards her office, her mind still jumbled up from Maggie’s proximity. The smell of her perfume sticks to her like glue, even amid the leather and gasoline from her ride.

She has tried to concentrate on her work, but all she can think of is the feel of Maggie pressed up against her. How _right_ it felt to have Maggie’s arms coiled around her.

She needs a distraction.

She switches on her computer, the personal one she’s been using to sort through the contents of the USB drive that traveled with Jamie in her pod. The other Alex’s notes had contained an address, one she hadn’t planned to visit, as the odds were high that the residence was occupied in her world.

Now though, she needs to clear her head.

When her lunch break rolls around, she punches the numbers into her GPS, letting her mind wander as she drives away from downtown National City.

Over the past few months, she has returned to the usb repeatedly, memorizing every fact, pouring over the lists of Jamie’s favorite foods, rewatching the home videos over and over. She goes back to them more than she should, but they’ve become so comforting.

More than anything, she’s curious about her other self. Curious about how she grew up, what her life was like, where she lived before she—

_Ping!_

The GPS announces her arrival and she brings the car to a stop in front of a small house in the suburbs.

It’s not what she expected.

It’s a little wear and tear, the lawn overgrown, not at all like the homey abode she’d seen in the background of the videos with Jamie playing in the front yard. That house hadn’t been expertly manicured, but it was evident that it was well-loved, with its lush front garden and swirls of multicoloured chalk decorating the driveway.

She hesitates by her car, wary that her actions are borderline trespassing. She hears a man rummaging around at the side of the drive. He takes off a pair of work gloves and squints at her before she can retreat back to the driver’s seat. “This look like somewhere you wanna live?”

She nods in the affirmative without thinking and he seems surprised, his eyebrows arched. “Really?”

“Yeah, I…” She sees the _For Sale_ sign not even planted in the yard yet and gestures to it. “I see you’re selling.”

He wipes at his brow— clearly he’s been at this a while. “Yeah. My old man’s house. He left it a dump, I’m sorry.”

Alex looks past his shoulder at the house once more, shielding her eyes from the sun.  The paint, which must have at one point been a bright, welcoming blue, is faded and peeling; the shudders on the windows are barely hanging onto their hinges. Even the roof is in desperate need of repair. The only indication that the house might even be on the market soon is the mountain of boxes in the driveway.

Still, when she asks to look around he ushers her through the doorway without further question. “My dad was a hoarder, so most of the work was just getting rid of all the junk.”

As they pass through the entryway, she can see how true that statement is. Though the man had put in a lot of work— there wasn’t any garbage to be seen— there were still stacks of boxes in the corner of each room. Items that he likely hadn’t been able to sell in the weeks following his father’s death. The place had been in a state of neglect for a long time, judging by the condition of the flooring. But if they ripped up the peeling linoleum and laid down some wood…

In the living room, she can see some lingering damp, the lines of dirt along the baseboard, and the dust caked thick on the mantel above the fireplace. She rubs her finger through it and imagines the photographs lined up. Kara and Eliza, one of her father perhaps, and then a family photo of herself and Jamie and Maggie.

“I don’t think it’s been used in a long time,” he says, kicking at the gnarled fireguard, “But I think it could be cleaned out, made workable, if you want an open fire.”

“Maybe when it’s colder,” she says, turning and imagining a couch in the middle of the dusty floor, the three of them under the blankets.

The rooms upstairs are mostly empty, save for some larger pieces of furniture, and he keeps assuring her that there’s more work to be done, but she can see the bones of the house. Can see past the cobwebs in the large circular window of the master bedroom. In her mind, she sees the sunlight streaming down onto the bed on a Sunday morning; it transforms the unruly garden with its untamed bushes into a nicely tended oasis.

Maggie is in all of these fantasies. Lying next to her in bed, placing soft kisses along her collarbone. Kneeling by a flowerbed, teaching Jamie to weed, their knees covered in dirt but their smiles wide.

This house— that family in the photograph— it’s all she wants.

It’s all she’s been able to think about since she found Jamie and the fantasies have become even more vivid as she and Maggie have grown closer once more.

She’s never stopped loving Maggie. Has never stopped _wanting_ her. The kiss at Kara’s party had only intensified those feelings.

Even the sight of the massive shower in the bathroom makes her shudder with want.

But it’s not just about that.

Their footsteps echo back down the stairs and into an extended kitchen/dining room area. She thinks of having Passover seders and how the whole extended family would fit in the dining room for Thanksgiving. Thinks about how Maggie loves the smell of pine, and they could fit a real Christmas tree, not the small fake one she knows Maggie keeps folded up in her closet.

This house, as ramshackle as it is, feels like it could be home.

“That’s about it, right now,” he says, smacking his hands free of the dust and grime.

“Contact me when you’re finished your work,” she says, handing him a business card from her wallet.

This house being available is a sign and she’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity to make Jamie’s life more comfortable.

As soon as she’s back in the car, she relays the information to Maggie. They hadn’t decided on a location or even a budget, but the minute Alex tells her the address, she’s in.

“Are you sure?” Alex confirms, throat tight with excitement, “It’s a dump right now but I really think we could-”

“I can do a real viewing when it’s ready,” Maggie says, as if to settle the discussion, “But that place was Jamie’s home, Alex.”

_And if could be ours, too._

That night, they gather in Kara’s living room, sitting cross legged on the carpet working on a puzzle.

“Jamie, we’ve got something to tell you,” Maggie starts as she places a corner piece.

Jamie’s eyes light up with the possibility of a surprise and Alex grins. “You know how a big monster destroyed the house?”

“Uh huh.” Her eyes bounce between them.

“Well, we’re gonna get it all fixed. For real.”

“Yeah?” It comes out as a whisper, as if this news was more than she could have hoped for, and if they hadn’t already decided that this house was the one, the way their daughter looked at them with so much hope would have been the clincher.

“But it’s gonna be even better this time.”

Alex leans forward and bops Jamie lightly on the nose. “And we’re gonna do lots of painting and decorating.”

“You’re even gonna get to choose the colour of your room,” Maggie adds.

“Even blue?”

“If you want,” Alex says.

“Or red?”

“Uh huh.”

Jamie beams, and then eagerly lists all of the colours she’s learned so far. She’s excited, Alex and Maggie are both happy, and just for a moment any of the lingering tension between them melts away.

Eventually, Jamie scoots over to the coffee table to draw a picture of what her new room will look like, and Maggie clears up the unfinished puzzle to put it back in its box. Alex picks up Officer Pickles, and thumbs at a row of stitches on his belly.

They’re tight, done by a practiced hand; so much like the ones on her own childhood toys. The ones her mother would carefully apply under her own watchful eyes whenever there was a busted seam. Was Eliza responsible for these as well?

She rubs Pickles’s soft velvet ear between her thumb and forefinger. Her own stuffed otter had been left behind in her mother’s house when she moved to college, so intent on growing up. The last place she had seen him was the loft, or maybe in the bottom of a drawer in her bedroom. If he’s still there, he would make a good backup in case anything ever happened to Jamie’s favorite toy.

In the living room, Maggie has crouched down next to Jamie, and Alex watches how intently she listens to her daughter’s rambling. Still toying with the velvet ear, she tries to imagine when the other Alex gave Pickles to Jamie. Was it when she was an infant? Or later, when she was a toddler? Maybe she was distressed and Alex presented a toy to comfort her, or maybe Jamie spied him and asked to play with him.  

She traces the neat stitches again, listening to the gentle murmur of Maggie’s voice.

They’ve been pulled together by their daughter, and just as any stuffed toy could be mended, so could their relationship.

~

It’s easy to see how much of Maggie is in Jamie. She’s got the thick, wavy hair and the dimpled cheeks. The same mischievous smile when they’re up to something. But when her daughter is standing next to her at the bathroom mirror, humming while she brushes her teeth, she’s struck by how much Jamie resembles _her_.

She knows she looks like her own parents. She sees in the pictures hanging in the hall of her mother’s house in Midvale. She knows how much it hurts her mom to see her father in her eyes.

The eyes that she now shares with Jamie, bright and full of wonder.

Jamie smiles up at her, mouth full of toothpaste, when she realises Alex is watching her, and there it is again— Maggie’s grin.

She really is _theirs_ and the thought of that fills her with a feeling she can’t quite place.

Before the breakup, before all of the tears and the lonely nights, this is what she dreamed about. Mornings just like this, with her and Maggie and their child. Their own little family unit.

When Jamie crash landed into her life, she had fully prepared to be a single mom. At least she could have just a slice of her fantasy life. But then Maggie had stepped up. She’s there in the mornings to tie Jamie’s shoes. She’s there for the outings to the park and for the tantrums when their daughter doesn’t want to go home because she’s made friends. She’s even trying with her.

Alex could have it all if she just says yes— if she leans in, instead of pulling away— but she remembers the breakup like it was yesterday. She remembers that last night. The final _see you around_.

This wasn’t Maggie’s dream.

And as guilty she feels about shutting Maggie down, she feels guiltier about forcing her into this life. Why should she be happy with Maggie when she’s changed nothing about herself to deserve it?

Beside her, Jamie spits out her toothpaste and Alex follows suit, handing her daughter a glass of water to rinse. She licks her thumb and rubs off a spare bit of toothpaste lingering at the edge of Jamie’s mouth, causing her to giggle.

“You’re coming with me to work today,” she announces.

“Yay!” Jamie cheers, shooting off towards her bedroom to get her stuffed companion. Alex looks back at the mirror, straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin.

She can’t dwell on the what-ifs.

At the DEO the agents, all of whom were briefed on the situation, greet Jamie with hi-fives and salutes and she responds in kind, saluting and pottering along beside her mom.

Her biggest fan is Supergirl, who kneels down with a faux-scowl. “Agent Danvers, Agent Pickles, what’s your report?”

Jamie looks at Alex, then Pickles, then Kara. “I’m wearing my new shoes.”

Kara looks down at the sneakers. “Ah! So you are!” She offers her hand. “You want your first mission of the day, Agent?”

Jamie looks up at Alex again for permission, and she nods. Then Kara whisks them away for a game of hide and seek to keep her occupied. As relieved as Alex is, she does text Kara a warning _not_ to lose her best agent.

With Jamie out of sight, Alex can finally focus on her research. Brainy had sent her some data earlier in the week and she was keen to have a look for herself. She loses herself in crunching numbers, running tests, and analysing results. She doesn’t notice the spinning of the clock until-

“Hey so I- woah, what’s that thing?”

Alex looks up from her microscope to find Maggie in the doorway of her lab. While they had planned for her to stop by and discuss a case, Alex realises she completely lost track of time.

Maggie is studying the large, silver object taking up space behind the benches. Alex lets her hands rest between her knees. “This is the pod Jamie came in.”

“Oh…” Maggie approaches slowly, head tilted, the way she does when she first steps into a crime scene.

Alex rolls her stool back and stands, the muscles in her back cracking in protest. She isn’t used to the long hours in the lab anymore. “It crashed in the afternoon, outside the south entrance to Belmont Park. Lots of civilians, lots of eyes on it, nightmare.”

“Nightmare,” Maggie agrees, knowing from working similar scenes.

“Anyway, there she was. We brought her back here, I ran tests. Brainy extracted the data.” She shrugs, as if it were as usual as picking up some laundry detergent from the corner store. She rounds the bench to hover by the pod.

Maggie circles the craft again, her fingers brushing the smooth metal surface, and then stands opposite Alex. “What did she say?”

“Well, she was unconscious—“ at Maggie’s alarmed look, she amends— “She was fine. Just sleeping.”

Maggie nods and they marvel at the pod together. Alex thinks of those first delirious few hours, trying to make sense of her life’s journey clicking onto an entirely new track in a matter of a single-portal crossing. Calling J’onn, her mom, having Kara there - and then hesitating.

Not calling Maggie.

“Sorry, I should have told you earlier,” Alex says. She can feel Maggie’s eyes on her, but her own remain trained straight down, studying the chrome paneling.

"About the pod?"

"No, about Jamie. I waited ten days."

The guilt has sat so heavy in her stomach, even as she weighed her options, determining that an evidence based approach would be best. She knew that she would want to know for sure before being confronted with such an event, but even so…

Looking back on the first week now is like looking through mottled glass. It’s fuzzy, the outlines not distinct enough for her to make sense of the decisions she had made in that headspace.

Maggie shakes her head, banishing the thought. "For good reason. You had to be sure."

"But still, I'm sorry." She runs her fingers through her hair, scratching at the back of her neck. "You had a right to know. You’re just as much Jamie’s mother as I am."

Maggie’s voice is gentle. “It’s fine.”

She gains the courage to look up. She studies Maggie’s face for any sign that it isn’t, but finds none. Still, Maggie came here for a reason. She doesn’t drop by just to say hello anymore.

“So, your case?” she asks, turning them from the past to the present.

Maggie hands her a file over the pod and she takes it, thumbing through the pages. The Science Division techs have come a long way since they first started to collaborate with the DEO, but they still need her to consult frequently. She goes to her bench, jots down a few notes on the toxicology report, and gives the file back with a sharp nod.

Maggie scans over her additions, satisfied. “Thanks, I got some paperwork to finish up, but then it should be closed.”

“Good.” Alex is glad they’ve had a break, since Maggie has been agonizing over this case for weeks. “I’ll see you at home?”

“Sure.”

Maggie gives her a little wave as she exits the lab and Alex watches from the doorway as she hoists Jamie up and swings her around into a hug. For just a few moments, the sterile halls of the DEO echo with laughter, filling Alex with joy. Then Maggie hands Jamie off to Kara, who distracts her from her mother leaving again, and it’s quiet once more.

Seeing Maggie with Jamie never fails to make her smile. When the two of them are together, they’re thick as thieves and she’s starting to think that Maggie is enjoying this life as much as she is. Maybe she does need to rethink their situation.

She spends the rest of the day planning, her work forgotten, and when she and Jamie get home, she makes Maggie’s favorite dinner. It’s not much, just a simple lasagna, but it will hopefully be the first step in starting something new.  

Maggie texts around 7 pm (just as Alex is taking the lasagna out of the oven) that she’s going to be later than expected. Alex is disappointed, but she knows better than anyone how long paperwork can take.

She places one plate back in the cabinet and serves two portions instead.

She’ll keep the lasagna warm in the oven. Even later at night, she’s sure Maggie will appreciate the gesture.

Seven turns into eight, eight turns into nine, and Jamie starts to nod off, her yawns audible from the couch. She had begged to stay up to see her mom before bed and Alex had relented, but there’s still no Maggie. She shoots off a text, letting her know there’s dinner in the fridge for when she gets home.

Nine becomes ten, and Jamie has succumbed to sleep, softly snoring. Alex picks her up and transfers her to Kara’s bed, tucking her in with Officer Pickles.

There’s still no response from Maggie.

Her fingers hover over Maggie’s contact info on her cell.

Maggie would call if there was a problem. If she was called out, she’d let Alex know. She’d call for backup even.

There are no missed calls.

Still, Alex can’t shake her worry and she paces as the phone rings and rings before going to voicemail. She settles on the couch with a book to wait. There’s no way she can sleep.

Around twelve thirty, the door finally opens and Maggie trudges in. Alex recognises the sluggish movements for what they are, and like a match dropping into a pool of gasoline, her worries are replaced by fury.

“Where the hell have you been?” She snaps, trying to control her volume.

“What do you mean?” Maggie sets her badge on the counter. “I was out?”

“Out?” Alex can see Maggie isn’t drunk, but she certainly isn’t sober. She’s struggling to kick off her boots. “You’ve been drinking. I thought you were doing paperwork.”

“Paperwork got done. Went out for a drink.”

“Why didn’t you return my calls?” Maggie ignores her, padding over to get some water from the kitchen faucet, and Alex follows. “I thought something was wrong, I was _worried_ —”

“What are you my wife?” Maggie interrupts, her eyes hard and unfocused, “No wait, we established you aren’t. Because you didn’t want me, remember?”

Alex recoils as if she’s been slapped, words stinging across her skin. “Maggie, that’s not—“

“Save it.” She sits heavily, staring up with that kind of spite that only overcomes someone with a few drinks in them. “I thought you’d want me now, y’know. The kid thing is settled, isn’t it? But no. Turns out I’m still not good enough for you.”

“Maggie—”

“Save it,” she repeats, harder, curling into a ball on the couch.

All of her strength sapped, Alex retreats back to the bedroom, where Jamie is snuggled up in Kara’s duvet with Pickles. She lies down next to their daughter, using a pillow to stifle her tears, hoping the sounds don’t carry across the divider.

Maggie’s right. She had made that clear on that last day, hadn’t she?

_I want you._

_Yeah I know babe-_

Alex curls away from Jamie, trying to still the clenching in her stomach and the trembling of her limbs, the rest of her words haunting her now-

_But I want kids._

And now they have one, and Alex has still made Maggie feel like she wasn’t good enough, when the truth was, it was _she_ who wasn’t enough, who didn’t deserve the love.

She isn’t sure how long it take her to drift to sleep, but in the morning, she wakes up to the smell of coffee.

Alex carefully extracts herself from the sheets, trying not to stir Jamie. It’s early enough that she’s still in a deep sleep, completely unaware of the tension between her parents. She lingers behind the divider, afraid of the raw energy still hanging in the air after last night.

Behind the kitchen counter stands Maggie, pouring two cups of coffee, her stance open. The side of her mouth twitches, eyes bloodshot as if she hasn’t slept well.

“I uh..I just…” Maggie shrugs, waves at the mugs.

Apology coffee. The kind either one of them would make when they’d gone to bed with an argument.

When Alex doesn’t take a mug, Maggie pushes one towards her. She curls her fingers back around her own mug, as if to draw from its warmth. It is the NCPD one Alex had given her for a gift that she hadn’t taken when she moved out.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Maggie admits, watching the wafts of heat rising from her coffee, “I’d been drinking… and honestly thinking about the kiss at Kara’s party.” She takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders and staring right into Alex’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Alex look away, watching the steam dance up from her own cup. “Don’t be, you’re right. I got worried and hassled you.”

She does her best to avoid the subject of the kiss. The lasagna that still sits in the refrigerator. The bike ride to the precinct. The attempts Maggie has made to reconcile them.

They’re too fragile.

“No.” Maggie shakes her head. “I don’t want us to be like that with each other. Not now, and not in the future.”

Alex punishes herself with a scalding sip without cooling it first, letting it burn her tongue rather than replying. Her coffee may be sweet, but the thought of this being the first of many sour exchanges leaves a bitter taste behind.

~

She gets the call during the last hour of her shift. It’s late in the evening, but crime doesn’t stop for dinner, and so neither do National City’s finest.

Maggie sighs, cursing the timing. She has been trying to mend the bridges she tried to torch in a single hot-headed, temper-fuelled tirade against Alex. Skipping dinner again leaves her with a special double-edged sword; not only is she letting Jamie down, she’s letting Alex down too. So much for trying to prove she wants her again.

She presses the number on the speed dial that was removed after the break-up and added again when Jamie landed into their life. The call connects quickly. “Hey.”

_“Hey. Everything okay?”_

There’s the rustle of pots and pans in the background. They’re both eating better these days. Healthier. No more takeout from the Chinese place down the street every other day. That’s what Maggie concentrates on, instead of the taste of reheated lasagne and humiliation after taking her frustration out on Alex and risking their chance.

She grabs her jacket from the back of her chair. “I got a call out. I’m sorry, I’m gonna be late-”

 _“Hey, no, don’t apologise,”_ Alex interrupts, _“Just remember to eat, okay?”_

Maggie can’t help but smile at the affection. “Will do. Give Jamie a kiss from me.” She’s about to leave the bullpen when she finds a quiet corner. “Actually wait, can...you put her on?”

 _“Yeah just-”_ Alex’s voice becomes muffled as she leans away from the phone, _“Jamie! Your mommy wants to talk to you!”_

There’s scuffling, and then a voice, _“Hello?”_

“Hey sweet girl,” Maggie says, “I’ve gotta go catch some bad guys tonight, so I’m gonna miss dinner.”

Jamie huffs and lets out a whine— the same one she makes when she doesn’t want to go to sleep— and Maggie quickly jumps back in, “I know, it sucks. But I’ll be home before you know it. And I’ll bring you some gummy bears.”

_“You promise?”_

Maggie shuffles over to the front desk where the receptionist hands over the clipboard for her to sign out a cruiser with specialist crime scene equipment. More likely to be a murder scene and not an assault or some strange case that she could hand over to the DEO so she can get home.

“I promise.” She signs her name and slides the clipboard back, and then gets the keys. She pauses, “I’m sorry, Jamie.”

_“Okay.”_

It’s muted and Maggie can hear that Jamie is upset and it unsettles her, but before she can try to reassure her further, Alex is back on - clearly Jamie just handed the phone back. Maggie says her goodbyes to Alex and gets in the vehicle. She’d need more than gummy bears to make it up to her daughter.

She pulls up to the scene and is greeted with a firm, “Detective Sawyer.”

“Officer Perry.”

She’s worked with the lanky, blonde cop before. He can be a bit prickly, blunt at his best, but he’s a straight cop with a sharp eye for detail. He’ll make a homicide detective one day for sure.

She fits on her gloves with a snap. “What have we got?”

“Four bodies. All Eruzian in origin as far as I can see, but obviously you’ll have to confirm that with the databases.” He holds up the crime scene tape and they go inside where the photographers are documenting the scene. A few of the crime scene specialists she recognizes are taking cuttings from the carpet. Swabbing for blood. It’s everywhere. Perry sticks his hands in his pockets and surveys the scene. “Three adults, and what appears to be a younger Eruzian. Possibly a child?”

Maggie stops dead in her tracks at the four white blankets. They’ve been lined up postmortem. This wasn’t a botched burglary. This was planned. The blanket drowns the smallest figure. She lifts the blanket gently, the bile rising up her throat as she sees the youthful features. She sets the cloth back down, murmuring a prayer she remembers from childhood services.

She picks up a photo— a happy family, completely unaware of the sad fate that would befall them.

Four smiling faces.

Four white blankets.

She works the scene as best she can as night falls— interviews neighbors, directs the techs, makes note of anything that looks out of place— but she’s finding that she can’t compartmentalise as much as she should be able to. By the time they are wrapping up, it’s late, and she knows she should go back to her own apartment, but she finds herself driving on autopilot back to Kara’s.

The spare key Alex had given her scrapes the lock and she shuffles through the door, her body heavy with exhaustion. She heads straight to Jamie’s little camp bed, needing to see that she’s safe. Breathing. Alive.

She brushes a lock of hair from Jamie’s forehead and sighs, remembering the small, deflated voice over the phone. Her daughter deserves more than this tiny bed. She deserves that beautiful new house with a proper bedroom so that she knows she isn’t replaceable. That she’s safe and loved.

She and Alex are going to give her the best life.

Jamie lets out a soft snore— so much like her mother— and Maggie feels emotion welling up in her chest. Her daughter is lying there in front of her, wrapped up in her pink and purple sheets, but all she can see is another small figure draped in white.

She wishes she had told Jamie she loved her on that call.

She goes to the kitchen in a daze, barely registering taking a glass from the cabinet for water. Alex appears from behind the divider, blinking blearily in the lamps from the counter. “Maggie?”

The glass is trembling in Maggie’s hand, she’s holding it under the tap until it overflows, the cold water cascading over her knuckles, her wrist. Alex comes over as if approaching a wild animal and carefully turns the tap off. She stares for a second, seeing the shake in Maggie’s hand. She pries the glass away and sets it down with a clink on the sideboard.

“Maggie,” she whispers, soft, “What happened?”

But Maggie can’t speak, her throat feels like it’s closed. Alex wraps her up in a tight hug and it’s so intimate, filled with that specific kind of warmth that still clings to her from her sleep. She buries her face into Alex’s shirt, surrounds herself with the familiar scent of her former lover. Her wet hand is dampening the cotton, but Alex doesn’t care, pulling Maggie even closer.

They melt into one person right there in Kara’s kitchen, the only sound being the almost inaudible buzz of the electricity in the kitchen lamps and the occasional splat of a water drop from the tap.

“Come with me,” Alex says after what feels like an eternity and leads Maggie to bed.

She helps her strip off her shoes and hands her an old t-shirt, soft from wear, turning away as Maggie undresses. She pulls back the sheets, ushering her into their warmth, and when Maggie catches her wrist, wordlessly begging her to stay and not go to the couch, she slips into bed next to her, pulling her into an embrace.

This is beyond the unwritten rules of their arrangement, but tonight she wants to be held, needs the kind of comfort that only Alex can provide. And Alex doesn’t seem to mind, doesn’t shift uncomfortably when Maggie presses forward to muffle her sobs into her shoulder, trying not to wake Jamie.

Eventually she chokes out, “He was so small, Alex. He was young.”

Alex’s arms tighten around her, pulling her even closer, their legs entwined, and somehow, with Alex’s fingers lightly scraping her scalp, she’s able to drift off to sleep.

She wakes up alone, her eyes still scratchy and dry. The place where Alex had lain next to her was empty, but still warm.

She rolls over, eyes sliding shut once more. She’s been sleeping on the couch for months now, and while she wouldn’t give up the time she spends with Jamie for anything, she has missed being able to stretch out-

“Mommy!”

Her eyes pop open as Jamie launches herself onto the bed. She bounces on her knees, and Maggie tickles her stomach until she squeals in delight. The girl wiggles out of her grasp, burrowing under the blankets, and Maggie pretends to have lost her, patting and patting at the sheets until a small head pops up next to her. Tiring of their game, Jamie snuggles into her neck with a happy sigh.

That maternal instinct Maggie had never expected comes rearing up once more. She’s been settling into motherhood bit by bit, but this is new. This feeling of needing to keep Jamie safe from the world.

She tucks her daughter under her chin and holds her until she’s sure that Jamie has dozed off again, then carefully climbs out of bed.

Alex is in the living room already, and two cups of coffee are set out on the coffee table. She doesn’t bring up the night before, just smiles and hands Maggie the second cup.

Jamie joins them an hour later, rubbing her eyes as she climbs up onto the couch between them. She snuggles into Alex’s side and Maggie’s heart warms at the sight. Alex is thumbing through a furniture store catalog, every so often leaning over to gain approval. A _this would go amazing in the kitchen, don’t you think?_ here and _What about this for the downstairs bathroom?_ there.

Every few pages, Jamie stops her and circles something she likes, or asks questions about the new house. They’ve both tried to include Jamie in every step of planning so that she feels as comfortable as possible during the move and she has taken the job as assistant interior designer very seriously.

“Did the big monster steal your favourite photograph?” Jamie asks suddenly.

Alex closes the magazine, her finger marking the page, and raises an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“When you and mommy were brides.” Jamie plays with the hem of her shirt idly. “You said it was your favourite.”

“Uh…well…” Alex trails off. They hadn’t talked about how to handle these questions from Jamie, hadn’t expected them even. “I don’t need a photograph to remind me of the best day of my life.”

Alex boops Jamie’s nose and she laughs, but when Maggie makes eye contact with her over Jamie’s head, she can see how the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

~

Still with plenty of furnishing, renovating and decorating to be done, they decide the best thing to do would be to move in a staggered process. They could furnish the bedrooms first, even if it was bare or scant for a while, just to live in the house while they found their feet

Unfortunately, the weekend that they plan to move in, Jamie comes down with the chicken pox.

At the sign of rash on Jamie’s skin, Maggie panics. Even though both Alex and herself had suffered with the virus, seeing her daughter in so much distress was agonizing in a way she never expected. Alex, for all her medical training, wasn’t any better, berating herself for not having checked Jamie’s vaccination status during her exams.

When she runs tests, it turns out that Jamie _had_ been vaccinated, but the strain of the disease from her home Earth was _just_ different enough to not be effective against the contagion.

However, even if the house move was delayed, the leases on Alex and Maggie’s apartments were both up. Maggie had cleaned out her place a few weeks ago, but they hadn’t had a chance to get to Alex’s since Kara was living there.

Eliza flies down immediately and both women have never been happier to see her. Her practice taking care of less than ideal patients frees them up and gives them the opportunity they need.

Maggie goes with Alex to her old apartment. It’s only the second time she’s been back to the place since that last night they spent together, bookended by too much tequila and a tearful goodbye.

Kara is already there when they arrive, and while she may be a one-woman moving team, she’s easily distracted by once-forgotten trinkets. She snorts as she sifts through a box of photographs.

“I didn’t know you had this,” she says, holding one up for Alex and Maggie to see.

Alex cranes her neck to look at it from across the room. It’s from Midvale, an old Polaroid of two lanky teenagers standing on the beach, the younger Alex grinning with her surfboard.

“Yeah. I always used to stare at it when you did something stupid and got yourself hurt,” Alex quips. “Made me feel bad, actually.”

She means it as a joke to lighten the mood, but it’s all too real. Having a super sister made her feel invisible at times. Even though she was younger, Kara was put into Alex’s advanced math and science classes, often showing her up in front of their peers. Surfing was the one thing that made her feel special. The one thing she was better at.

The surfboard itself is leaning against the door, ready to be transferred to their new garage, where hopefully it will be used to teach Jamie how to surf on trips to the beach.

Maggie wanders over to it,  listening to the sisters reminisce. Alex had promised to teach her to surf, but they hadn’t gotten the chance. She turns back to her earlier task of folding away clothes and wonders if the offer might still be there. As she packs each item away, she recognises patterns and textures; peeling them off Alex between smiles and kisses.

It’s harder than she expected it to be when she volunteered to help. Each corner of the apartment had played an important role in their story, and seeing it empty like this is too much. In the end, she remains glued to the floor as Alex tosses the last of her belongings into a few worn cardboard boxes at their feet.

The three of them stand there, memories dancing around empty space.

Alex curls her arms around herself, gazing misty eyed at the empty room. It had always been sparsely furnished, even when Maggie moved in— tentative as she was to make any space feel like home, lest it be yanked away again. Still, she can tell that this apartment meant more to Alex than she is letting on.

Alex’s fingers brush the solid marble of the fireplace as she makes her final rounds. “This is the apartment I became an agent in.”

“Remember the first time I came here as Supergirl?” Kara asks.

Alex cracks a smile. “You scared the life out of me.”

She turns then to Maggie. “Remember when we had the fight about whether the first or second Shrek was the best?”

“The second,” Kara jumps in.

“Thank you!” Maggie agrees, earning her a look of betrayal from Alex, and the three of them laugh. “I was happy to sleep on the couch for three nights, because I knew I was right..”

Alex shakes her head. “My first taste of how tough lesbian arguments were.”

The comment is light, even if it seems like a box they should have taped shut, but are now peeling open to peek back inside one more time at the memories of their relationship.

Then they’re quiet again.

Maggie hums, tracing the scratches on the floor with her boot. “You’re not gonna carve your initials into it somewhere, Kate Beckett style, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” Her face says otherwise. Maggie can tell that she’s nostalgic. “Kinda want to though.”

Maggie feels it too. All those memories.

Knocking on the door with a box of pizza and sweaty palms, reciting her speech over and over in her head.

Kissing the girl she had been wanting to kiss.

They made love for the first time in this apartment, and the last. They’d had fights, both silly and serious, and then made up afterwards. They’d cooked meals and moved in together after Alex presented her with a key.

This apartment had been Maggie’s home for a while too. She’d never planned to stay here forever, but she had thought when she left, Alex would be leaving with her too. She had pictured them packing up their belongings together, moving them into a place they’d chosen as their forever home. And while they have done that, the feeling is bittersweet because they aren’t _together_.

Alex shakes her head. “I lived a whole life here, different from before.”

They both know what she means. It was here that she flourished in her career and in her romantic life— the personal and the professional. This place saw the birth of an Alex Danvers who knew who she was and what she wanted. An Alex who could be honest and true with herself.  

“Now for something new.” Kara grins and hefts the biggest box onto her shoulder, tucking another under her arm before heading out the door.

With Kara loading up the car, Alex and Maggie have a few moments alone. They’re looking at each other and Maggie can see the thousands of things Alex wants to say, knows the memories _they_ hold.

There’s so much they could talk about, but truly, nothing more needs to be said. Instead Maggie just smiles and picks up a box too, giving Alex a moment of quiet reflection alone.

She watches Alex’s face as she closes the door on that chapter of their lives for the last time, and sees red rimmed eyes from tears she pretends not to notice had been shed.

A few nights later, they find themselves both camped out on the floor next to where Jamie is whimpering on the couch. She’s wearing mittens so she can’t scratch at the chickenpox, and each whine is a needle in Maggie’s heart. Her daughter is in so much discomfort and she just wishes she could do more to help.

She’d expressed the same thought to her mentor at the station earlier in the day (she and Alex have been trading days off to take care of Jamie) and the woman had suggested getting Officer Pickles mittens as well. It had taken Maggie her entire lunch break, plus a few hours after her shift to find two pairs small enough, but when she’d showed them to Jamie and the little girl had smiled for the first time in days, she had known the search was worth it.

And this time, when she was late coming home, Alex hadn’t been angry. She’d taken one look at the tiny matching mittens and softened as Maggie explained her plan, then maneuvered four mittens on Officer Pickles’ four paws.

Now, as they lie side by side on the floor, watching their daughter sleep fitfully, Maggie revels in that softness.

“Thank god she finally got to sleep,” Maggie says quietly.

“She’s exhausted, poor thing.” Alex’s voice is so tender.

She’s always been a kind, caring person. Completely protective of those she considers family. It’s one of the things Maggie loved - _loves_ \- about her. She scoots forward on the floor, closer to Alex, who doesn’t flinch away when Maggie wraps an arm around her waist, spooning her.

She’s missed this. Holding Alex like this. Being Alex’s rock. Her ride or die.

She’s been clear about her intentions. She knows what she wants and she’s fairly certain Alex wants the same thing, but she just can’t be sure. She hasn’t wanted to bring it up again because they’d kissed, and then Alex had pushed her away twice, and then that short, seething spat had happened.

But Maggie has to know for sure, won’t let Alex delay this conversation any longer. “Do you not wanna be with me anymore?”

“I…” The thumb tracing patterns on Maggie’s forearm stills. “It’s not that I don’t want you.”

“Okay…”

Alex rotates in Maggie’s arms to face her. They’re closer now than they have been since the party, and Alex slowly exhales as she gathers her thoughts.

“You’ve been forced into my fantasy. This is it. You, me, Jamie. God, a house with a huge backyard and…” Alex bites her bottom lip, as if she’s frustrated with herself for being unable to voice her thoughts. “This is what I used to dream about. This is what I mourned when you told me you didn’t want kids.”

Maggie swallows a lump in her throat at Alex’s confession; this has been the barrier between them. This is it tumbling down, as if she can actually see Alex for the first time since they had said their goodbyes and broke off an engagement.

Their bodies press together under the blankets; breasts, ribcages, knees. Alex’s feet whisper along her toes. It wouldn’t take any effort to kiss her.

Alex continues unsteadily, “I feel like...you’ve been made to do this. I get the house, the kid. It isn’t fair I get you, too.”

The harsh whispers between them are joined only with the soft, slow breathing of Jamie on the couch.

"I haven't been made to do anything. I love Jamie-"

Alex jumps in before they escalate onto a tangent, "And you're a great mom. It just feels like you've been made to give so much for this. Your dreams, your future."

"Alex, I haven't given anything up. Nothing that’s worth anything. I've _gained_ a future," Maggie stresses the words. If this is what’s keeping them apart, she wants to sweep it aside, needs Alex to understand there is nothing to be guilty about.

"It doesn’t seem fair to you."

“You don’t get to decide what’s fair, Alex. I made this choice. I want Jamie. I want the house. I want-”

Jamie wakes up with a start, cutting Maggie off. She rubs her eyes, searching through the dark for a familiar face. “Mommy?”

Alex shuffles back, out of Maggie’s embrace. “You okay?”

Jamie grumbles, unintelligible when she’s cranky and tired. Maggie leans up, waving her down. “Come cuddle with us. We’ll make you feel better.”

She climbs down off the couch and over Alex, snuggling in between them. The conversation has been halted, but as Jamie drifts back off, Alex reaches out and gently brushes an eyelash from Maggie’s cheek, and then laces their fingers later.

It’s an unspoken _we’ll talk later_ , but this time, it isn’t a rejection.

It’s a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you recognised the easter egg in this chapter, uh, sorry for the realisation? Let us know what you thought!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has received so much love and we’re so thankful for all of the support. Please enjoy this chapter and let us know what you think!
> 
> Also thank you to @smol_sawyer for their beautiful art inspired by last chapter: https://twitter.com/santonaranja/status/1141110719557115904

Much to their relief, Jamie recovers.

Her parents savour the renewal of her energy the morning she throws off her blankets and jumps on the couch, buoyed by the lack of lethargy and tired eyes.

(Eventually, however, Alex asks her to stop and come for breakfast, lest the squeaking couch springs snap.)

With Jamie back on her feet, they’re back on track with getting everything arranged for the new house. The experience they’ve gained in co-parenting means they’ve been able to arrange their shifts more efficiently, so they’ve had plenty of time to decorate.

And truthfully, Maggie has found that both she and Alex have been working less overtime. Before, when it was just them, it was easy to get caught up in work, particularly when they were working joint cases. Now that they have Jamie, they don’t want to miss a moment of her growing up.

The first time Jamie sees the new house, she tears off, running around the empty rooms with glee, her voice and footfalls echoing about. It’s strange, she’s even more familiar with it than they are, and she insists on being a part of each redecorating task.

She’s “helping” Maggie lay down painters cloth when she spots a young boy playing in the garden next door.

“It’s Charlie!” she exclaims, but Maggie catches her shoulders before she goes shooting off outside to play.

“Wait uh.” She kneels down to Jamie’s height. “So the thing is, Charlie might not know who you are.”

Jamie’s face drops. “What? But he’s my friend! I've missed him!”

“I know.” Maggie strokes one of her dimples with her thumb. “But imagine it’s a game. You get to introduce yourself all over again. You’ll be friends again in no time.”

The explanation is good enough for Jamie, and she scrambles off out the patio doors to greet him. Maggie watches with a smile as Jamie holds out her hand to shake, turning back to her task only when she’s certain that Jamie and Charlie are happily playing.

She fixes the dropped edge of the painter’s cloth, listening to Alex moving furniture upstairs. They’re sleeping in the same bed tonight, both through practicality and through agreement. There is currently only one bed set up, and since this is Jamie’s first night staying in a home she believes was always hers, they had loosely agreed this would be the best way.

She pries open a paint tin and dips a stick in, stirring and stirring. Her stomach twists as Alex descends the stairs. She pokes her head in with a smile.

“I see Jamie’s made a friend.”

Maggie sits back on her heels. “She knows him from before.”

“I’ll be good for her to have him to play with.”

Alex looks at the paint, the cloth, the empty room. They hear the peals of laughter from the two children outside. A car passes on the street. There is a lawnmower purring a few houses over. They’re alone. Maggie waits, but Alex hums, stepping back from the doorway.  

“I’ll go make some lunch,” she says, and heads for the kitchen.

The same bed.

Tonight, they’re going to sleep in the same bed. They still haven’t had a chance to have that talk.

She stirs harder, the crimson colour like a warning.  

~

Kara comes by later in the afternoon to help with painting.

She’s been around frequently, lifting heavy boxes, helping to assemble furniture, and Maggie for one is grateful for the help.

They make small talk, finishing an entire coat of paint around the room before Kara changes her tact. “I saw you guys at the party.”

Maggie pauses, roller pressed to the wall. “You mean when we....?”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she just continues pushing the roller upwards.

Kara sighs behind her. “This needs to work out for Jamie’s sake. And maybe that’s the best way, to be together, but maybe it isn’t. Just… think about it, okay?”

Maggie sets her jaw. She can hear that Kara is taking the tactful approach, not making a judgement either way. But the limbo that she and Alex are in frustrates her. She presses the roller harder against the wall. “I understand you want what’s best for Alex.”

“I want what’s best for Jamie.” Kara dips her roller back into the tray at her feet. “What’s best for Alex is that she’s happy, Maggie.”

That’s something they can both agree on. They keep painting, moving from one wall to the next, red on red and raising Maggie’s hackles.

Kara speaks up again, “You know, Jamie’s lucky.”

Maggie frowns, elbow the sweat from her brow. “She lost her parents, her world-”

“But she’ll never know it.”

The roller in Maggie’s hand touches the wall, but doesn’t move. She doesn’t respond, understanding in increments, each word looping around her mind.

Kara continues, amplifying that loop, “She thinks she had a strange dream and woke up at her mom’s work. She’ll never know she was orphaned, that everything she knew before is gone.” Her own roller slows. “She sees you and Alex as her moms, as if she never left her own Earth.”

She returns to the tray of paint, that red colour that Jamie had picked out. “I know what it’s like to be sent away and lose everything.” Kara’s voice wavers and Maggie finally turns, seeing her poised over the paint tray as if she’s lost grip of the task completely. “I lost my parents, my home. Everything except Clark, and by the time I got here, he wasn’t even my baby cousin anymore.”

Kara carefully lays her roller down and looks up, eyes glossy from reliving those memories. “You can’t ever tell her about where she came from.”

“We won’t tell her,” Maggie promises, putting her own roller down in her tray and giving Kara her full attention. “We’re just gonna love her like they did. She’ll always be loved here.”

They both crouch on the floor unmoving, not returning to their task, as if waiting for each speck of dust to settle again before they do.

Alex pokes her head around the door, breaking their reverie. She beckons them both to follow her to the living room. There on their new IKEA rug lies Jamie, sipping a juice box and watching cartoons. On the screen, an animated version of Supergirl darts through the sky, saving the main character, and Jamie points to the crest on Supergirl’s chest.

“El Mayarah, right?” She cranes her neck back to Alex, who nods, but the entire time Maggie is watching Kara.

Multiple emotions flicker across her face. Pride. Joy. Gratitude. It’s clear how much of an impact she’s had on her niece already and Maggie realises for the first time how lonely Kara’s life must have been, not having any connection to her heritage, her home. Everything she came from is dead, and while Clark has studied the history of Krypton, learned their language, he’s an Earthling. He left her alone with strangers to adapt to this strange new world.

While Maggie may not come from a dying planet, may not have been flung across the stars, she knows what it’s like to feel alone. Those first few months at her aunt’s house, she felt like she was walking on eggshells, trying to behave for fear of being cast out once more.

For the first time, she really sees Kara Danvers. Sees the layers of pain and loneliness that are buried underneath that bubbly personality.

When they return to the room they were working on, she catches Kara's elbow. “I want you to know, you'll always have a home here.”

Kara squeezes Maggie's hand as hard as the Kryptonian dares, eyes glassy once more. “Stronger together.”

~

The house is better than they imagined once it’s all fixed up.

Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, beautifully finished wood floors; they’d even knocked down a few walls to create the open concept kitchen and living space that Alex had been coveting.

They made sure Jamie’s room was furnished before they moved in. Maggie wishes that she had a camera to capture the look on her face when she first sees it all set up. Gone is the small camp bed and in its place is a loft bed with a small desk and a beanbag chair underneath— perfect for when Jamie will inevitably become a little bookworm like her mothers.

The girl delights at the fuzzy rug and the organizer already containing all of the art supplies a small child could ever want, but the thing that gets the biggest grin is the large toy box in the corner, hand painted by her aunt. Maggie has known that Kara is a talented artist, but she has truly outdone herself with this project. The colors are bright and beautiful, and the three otters are so realistic that they could seemingly jump right off of the sides and onto the carpet.

“It’s Pickles and his friends!” Jamie says, tracing the brown animals.

“Sure is,” Kara says, kneeling down.  

Maggie watches the interaction between aunt and niece. She hopes Jamie won’t fret too much, that she won’t find this too much of an adjustment after being camped out in Kara’s living room with her parents an arms reach away for months.

They needn’t have worried; exhausted after all the unpacking, Jamie passes out quickly, leaving Alex and Maggie facing each other over the bed in the master bedroom.

When they were staying in Kara’s apartment, Jamie had been placated with the excuse that Maggie had to get up early for work and didn’t want to wake Alex up, and that was why she was sleeping on the couch.  But they couldn’t keep up that charade.

It’s the same king-sized mattress they’d first made love on, and that’s all Maggie can think about as she stares across the expanse of it at her ex-lover.

Alex clutches her pyjamas in front of her. “This is weird, right?” She hugs the soft flannel to her chest, as if to preserve her modesty. “You can be honest.”

Maggie’s own police academy gym clothes are tucked under her arm. She shifts back and forth, glancing over Alex’s head towards the door, unsure.  “I mean, I can go sleep on the couch-”

“This is a king-sized bed, Maggie.”

Fatigue seeps through Maggie’s bones. They’ve had a long day assembling furniture, painting, and hosting. The thought of sleeping in a bed again is more than tempting, despite the awkwardness that still lingers after those nights spent cuddling on the floor by Jamie’s cot. She manages a smile and jokes, “Good, I’m sick of the couch.”

Alex gives that shy little laugh— the one Maggie remembers from those early days— and ducks her head.

_Please, ignore the pyjamas._

_Oh no, they’re cute._

They take turns in the ensuite, transformed into a veritable home spa thanks to some nice diffusers they’d been given by J’onn. Then they climb into bed and switch off the light.

It’s twilight hours, all dusk and shadows. The moonlight streams in from the window, casting them both in an ethereal glow. Their first night in the suburbs and away from the city din, it’s too quiet to sleep. The silence stretches out between them, and Maggie is all too aware of the woman lying inches from her.

The bed shifts.

“Do you wanna talk now?” Alex whispers through the dark.

Maggie turns to her silhouette. “You ready?”

Alex hesitates, then, “I’m ready to talk.”

It’s a deliberate choice of words. She studies Alex’s face through the dark, watches as she bites the inside of her cheek, her eyes wide, searching. She can’t see their colour, the rich whiskey tones she has come to love so much, but her memory fills in the gaps.

It’s tempting just to kiss her, to press her to the mattress and to make love to her, foregoing words and instead relying on action.

“These last few months, living with you and Jamie in Kara’s apartment,” Maggie starts, “It’s been-”

A knock downstairs.

Another chance vanishing, another interruption.

This conversation has been started and halted once again.

Switching on the bedside lamp still with it’s half price sticker on, Maggie is tempted to call Kara and ask her to take Jamie for the day, just so that she and Alex can go somewhere no one else can find them. From the look on Alex’s face, the feeling is mutual.

They shuffle downstairs together in their pjs, fingers brushing by the door. Another promise of later. Always later.

Maggie peers through the peephole before opening the door. It’s Charlie’s dad, their neighbor, a sleepy, crying Charlie at his knee.

“Hi, I’m so sorry.” He’s apologetic when he sees the pyjamas. “I’m sorry, Charlie left his stuffed rabbit here earlier.”

“Where’s Flopsy?” Charlie mumbles through tears, tired but distraught.

They share a glance and divide and conquer, Maggie going to search Jamie’s room and Alex heading to the living room to check under the couch. Eventually Flopsy is recovered from in between the cushions, but both kids are now more fully awake and needing to run off their newfound energy. Maggie just shakes her head fondly and ushers Charlie and his dad out to the backyard while Alex prepares some hot cocoa.

Early night in the suburbs is pleasant and fantasy-like. While their entire house is shaping up to be a dream, the garden is Maggie’s personal favorite. She had put in a lot of work in decorating it, with garden lights hanging from the pergola and backyard furniture perfect for the garden parties they will surely host.

She and Charlie’s dad - a computer systems analyst named Robbie - lean back in the deck chairs, watching as their kids chase each other around the planter boxes.

“Charlie is usually so shy but…” His dad scratches his head and smiles. “He’s really hit it off with Jamie.”

Maggie had been worried that things would be different on this Earth, but she’s glad Jamie has her friend still. “Well, that’s good.”

Alex pushes open the sliding door, a tray of mugs balanced on her arm. Jamie and Charlie run over, grabbing two mugs of hot chocolate— with marshmallows of course— and they all settle around the table.

Maggie smiles to herself over her own mug. They’re so suburban now, sitting out on their patio, talking to their neighbour about home improvement. She was never very social with her neighbours in any of the apartments she’d lived in, but she likes Robbie. His ex-wife, Charlie’s mother, is a cop, so he appreciates how hard it is for her. His job gives him the ability to work from home so he can spend time with his kid, something Maggie is learning to appreciate.

The kids get tired not long after they finish their cocoa and Charlie and his dad take their leave. Maggie can tell how exhausted Alex is from her sluggish movements as she clears the patio table.

“Go ahead, I’ll lock up,” she offers, earning a grateful smile from Alex.

Maggie makes sure everything is cleaned up and turned off, but when she returns to their room, Alex is out like a light. She climbs into bed, slipping beneath the covers and turning onto her side. Alex’s chest rises and falls rhythmically, and while it’s good to see her relaxed, their conversation has been postponed once more.

She eventually drifts off to sleep, dreaming of Flopsy and Pickles, the simple suburban life, and the wife she wants to share it with.

~

Alex trudges up the stairs to the ensuite, sore from the day of work. Despite the pain in her shoulder, the stress that she carries dissolves with each step.

Kara greets Brainy and Nia at the front door, a thrilled Jamie pattering over to greet them. They’ve come over to babysit for a few hours so that she and Maggie can go out for a drink with Kara, but they sound distant, like she is ascending to a different reality.  

She strips down to her underwear and her undershirt, towel tucked under her arm. She opens the door to the bathroom and runs right into a body exiting.

Maggie, who is wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her body, stumbles back. The towel ends high on her thighs, teasing more skin, leaving very little to Alex’s imagination.

“Oh, shit, sorry I-” Her voice comes out as a squeak as her face burns. “Uh, hi.”

“Hi. I was just-” Maggie gestures begins her at the steamy shower, her towel almost slipping with the motion.

“Yeah I uh...I got that.” Alex forces herself to look Maggie in the eyes.

“Yeah, so…” Maggie starts, “Yeah.”

“Yup.”

“So uh, yeah.”

“Hmmm…” Alex tries to be subtle, fixing the hem of her underwear and placing her towel over her hips.

The steam curls out from the bathroom, the heat adding to the intensity between them. They move to shuffle around each other, but then Maggie stops abruptly. Alex follows her gaze to the bruises on her shoulder.

Maggie flitters her fingertips across the mottled skin of her shoulder blade. “This hurt?”

“It’s fine,” Alex insists, even as she inhales sharply at Maggie’s touch.

“Yeah?”

Maggie pries the strap of her tank top away and hisses at the bruises which carry down towards Alex’s spine, an angry, angular patch of blue and black. A K’hund had broken out of containment earlier in the day, and she'd had the misfortune of being thrown across the DEO and into the command center console.

“I’m okay, I promise,” Alex says, the sounds of their guests filtering up from downstairs. She backs into the steamy bathroom, away from the temptations of Maggie’s touch. “Really, I am.”

Maggie’s fingertips hover in the air, and curl away like a flower when the sun goes down. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Alex says, nodding once, and closing the bathroom door.

Whether it is the lingering heat from Maggie’s shower or from the encounter, it pools low in Alex’s stomach. She gets into the shower, letting the spray assault and overwhelm her senses, and then leans back against the cool tile.

She rests her hand on her sternum, closing her eyes at the contemplation. With a huff she pushes off the shower wall and turns back into the spray, shaking the tension from her limbs, but it never truly goes from her stomach. She presses a flat palm against the tiles, giving in and sliding the other between her thighs.

She is back in her old apartment, the boxes and furniture gone, all rustic, earthy and empty. Fantasising about making love to Maggie in that space one more time, she imagines her knees digging onto the hardwood floor, hears their moans echoing around the vacant space.

All this time she has spent keeping Maggie at arm’s length because of her own internal issues, and what for? Maggie has put her cards firmly on the table, told her there is no need to beat herself up about this, to put words in each other’s mouths. If they both want this, it is there to take.

And god, does Alex want it. The bruised muscles burn as with her frantic ministrations, and she bites at her own bicep as she gets closer to the precipice, envisioning that apartment, Maggie beneath her, around her, inside her.

In the rush of steam and release, Alex finally lets her guilt evaporate.

~

_“Human children are usually equipped with stuffed versions of bears.”_

Kara cackles at Maggie’s impression of Brainy’s first encounter with Officer Pickles. When Jamie had realized that Brainy truly didn’t know what an otter is, she’d been distressed. Then, she’d taken it upon herself to educate him, spending close to an hour bombarding him with every fact she could remember about the creatures.

“He’s not a bear, he’s an otter!” Kara mimics Jamie’s shocked voice.

They’ve been laughing and joking around since Alex got up from the table to get them another round of drinks. When she and Alex were dating before, most of her interaction with Kara was at game night or on a crime scene with Supergirl. It’s different with her one-on-one, easier when she’s just Alex’s little sister, not an alien vigilante punching herself out of any problem she comes across. Maggie would even go as far as to say that they’re becoming friends.

She glances up at the bar, where Alex is jockeying for the bartender’s attention, then turns back to Kara. “Hey, you mentioned to Alex you wanted to run a story on the attack?”

Two days prior, there had been an attack on a neighbourhood in National City known to be a haven for offworlders. Alien-owned businesses had been burned down and homes had been vandalized. The local human community has since come out to support and to help them rebuild, but the issue of equal protection continues to be a hot topic— and one that Maggie knows is dear to Kara’s heart.

“Yeah,” Kara huffs, “But Alex won’t let me report on anything I’ve found out inside the DEO.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Yeah, I know.” Kara stares down at the table, spinning a beer mat. “Still frustrating.”

Supergirl can only do so much for the alien citizens of National City. She can lift steel and move rubble to help them repair, even provide backup to the police investigating the perpetrators, but she can’t change the law.

Kara Danvers though, she can help sway public option.

Maggie leans in a little, motioning for the reporter to do the same. “She can’t, but I can.”

“Really?” Kara’s eyes widen in surprise.

“DEO requested inter-agency strategies going forward,” Maggie says, “The DEO Director might not be able to key you in on plans for the future, because anything she says can be twisted for political reasons.” She smirks, pointing at herself.  “...but a city cop doesn’t have that problem.”

Understanding dawns on Kara and she shares a smile. “A drive around with a Science Division detective could be a nice PR stunt for the precinct, and an interesting feature for the public to see how the cops handle these cases going forward.”

“It’s a win-win.” Maggie smacks her palm on the table to illustrate her point. “I’ll talk to my Captain and give you a call.”

“Thanks Maggie.”

“No problem.” Maggie looks back over at the bar, fiddling with a coaster under her drink. Alex is leaning up against the counter, talking to J’onn. “I’d like to think we’re friends, right? Getting there?”

“Yeah,” the sunny response comes, “I’d like to think so too.”

They may have had their ups and downs, but Kara has been steadfast in her support of Jamie. Maggie recalls the weight of that conversation over paint cans, how distant Kara had looked when she spoke of having to adjust to a new planet. What must it have been like to learn that another child was sent away just as she was?

“You know, I’m sorry I didn’t really know about Krypton. I mean I did but…” She spins the ice around in her empty glass with her straw. “It got lost in all the noise at the start of my relationship with Alex. I was concentrating on her, y’know? And I didn’t really have time to think about Supergirl beyond her punching her way through sensitive hostage situations.”

They share a somber laugh, remembering how they’d almost lost Alex that night. Their initial argument about the hostages had been swept away with the trauma of what followed when they’d really fought, arguing over who knew her best, while Alex’s life ticked away second by second.

She knows Kara is thinking about it too, knows how much restraint she must be using to keep her glass from shattering in her grip.

But Alex is fine. She’s alive.

And Maggie and Kara are trying.

“I didn’t know you were thrown out.” Kara says, attention fixed on the ring of condensation on the table. “Alex didn’t tell me. She just said you hate Valentine’s day. And when I finally knew...I felt awful for pushing you, remember?”

Maggie pauses.

She does remember.

Even though Alex had given her better memories of Valentine’s Day— had even helped her enjoy it— the day will always be somewhat tainted by the events of the past.

The sting of rejection has lessened over time, but she will always bear its scars.

“Losing a home is hard if it isn’t by choice, no matter what the circumstances,” she says, “Maybe we had more in common than just Alex after all.”

Two teenagers lost in a new home, and beyond that, sharing a thirst for justice and compassion for those who are underrepresented. She’s seen the way Supergirl has changed her approach. The way she has matured, relying on her power as a symbol for hope.

“A lot was missed.” Kara looks up, hopeful. “Maybe we can start making up for it now.”

“I’d like that.”

Kara looks up towards the bar. “Speaking of…” Making sure Alex is still occupied, she takes a chance. “You and Alex…?”

Maggie follows her gaze. Alex catches her staring and smiles. “Getting there.”

~

Alex leans up against the bar, tapping her fingers against the counter. Darla’s is bustling and it takes a while to grab the bartender’s attention, but she finds that she’s less annoyed than she normally would be.

She’s not here drinking after a rough case, or trying to drown her sorrows after a breakup with the woman she thought she’d marry. Her life has done a complete turnabout since the last time she was here.

Today she feels content.

She’s settled.

The bartender sets her drinks in front of her and she leaves a few dollars tip. She’s about to return to her table when she spots J’onn at the end of the bar, nursing a glass of Albarian Whiskey.

She carries the three glasses over to the empty spot next to him, greeting him with a nudge on the shoulder. She slides onto the barstool and they exchange pleasantries. Figuring Kara and Maggie can survive a few moments without their drinks, she asks him about his work now, happy to hear that he’s enjoying his work as a private investigator.

“You’ve grown wise in the last few months,” he says, after she fills him in on how they’ve been registering Jamie for school.

“Oh I don’t know,” Alex swivels around to check on Maggie and Kara, “Still feel kinda dumb.”

J’onn lets out a little laugh, and they clink their glasses together. She’s never been afraid to speak her mind around him. She’s always been open and honest with him. He’s seen her at her highest and her lowest, and he’s always known the value of a mate— known the value of Maggie to her— even before she knew it herself.

“I’m proud of you, Alex.” He looks over his shoulder, following her line of sight. “Seeing the leader, and mother, you’ve become. It’s been a great journey to watch.”

At the reference to Jamie, her heart swells. “You told me I could have it all, right? Career and kids.”

His smile is a rare one, toothy and relaxed. “I think you could add one more thing into that equation.”

She swirls her own drink around in the glass, the amber liquid sloshing against the sides. Before she returns to her table, she seeks his counsel. “If you were me, what would you do?”

His response is immediate, as if he’d known what she was going to ask. “If I had a chance to be with Myriah again, I would prove to her I loved her a thousand times over.” He ducks his head, fixing her with knowing eyes. “If I had a chance.”

“A thousand times over?”

“And a thousand times more. I wouldn’t hesitate.” His hand is firm on her shoulder, its weight comforting. “If this Earth also succumbed to flames, would you die with regrets in your heart?”

Alex catches Maggie’s eyes again. The look they share sets her heart racing like it did when they’d first begun to tumble into each other.

That feeling is the last bit of encouragement she needs.

~

Two weeks after moving in, they’ve bedded in. Normally, they balance out the responsibility of cooking and cleaning, but tonight Alex had come home from work with an armful of files and Maggie had volunteered to do both. The extra work was worth it to see the relief filling Alex’s eyes.

When it creeps closer to Jamie’s bedtime, Alex is still sitting on the couch, spreading her paperwork out on the coffee table, her glasses perched on her head.

“Hey, do you mind tucking Jamie in, too?” she asks, rubbing at her forehead, “I really just wanna get this finished.”

“Of course.”

“I’m sorry. You’ve done the cooking, cleaning, bathing _and_ -”

“Alex,” Maggie placates, “You’re swamped right now. It’s fine.”

Honestly, she’d missed the bedtime ritual after working a late shift last night, so she’s more than happy to tuck her daughter in.

She knocks on the door frame of Jamie’s room to announce her presence, Jamie snuggled up under the covers in her little duck onesie. Maggie takes Officer Pickles from the end of her bed and hands him to her.

Jamie hugs the stuffed otter tight, wiggling further under her comforter. “Can you turn my new lamp on?”

“Your new lamp?” Maggie asks, searching around.

“It’s really cool. Mommy made it.” Jamie points to a disc-like object on her desk that Maggie hadn’t seen before. It’s flat and circular, the size and shape of a frisbee. When she presses a black button on its round edge, it hums and beams up onto the ceiling.

“She did, huh?” she marvels, impressed with Alex’s design.

She turns off the main lights and the whole ceiling is flush with stars. She stares up in wonder at the projection, recognizing the alien constellations that Alex showed her when they used to stargaze. It’s such a simple creation, but so beautiful, and Maggie is amazed at Alex’s brilliance. Her craft.

She perches on the edge of the bed beside Jamie, who is staring up at the ceiling, tracing patterns with her finger. “That one looks like a horse.”

“It does.” Maggie directs her attention to another patch of stars. “What about that one?”

“Hmmm…” Jamie scrunches her face up in thought. “A starfish.”

“A starfish?” Maggie says, playfully poking one of Jamie’s dimples.

They scan the stars and name out a few shapes, and then Jamie yawns and grow quieter until eventually, she’s out.

Maggie knows how busy Alex has been at the DEO. An insurgency has kept them on their toes, depleting local resources and requiring the DEO to step into civilian-area policing more and more. Yet Director Danvers still took the time to make something that would bring their child joy.

After making sure Jamie was comfortable and sound asleep, she tip-toes out and down the stairs. In the living room, Alex remains crouched over her paperwork. She gives Maggie an apologetic grimace, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Sorry, I needed to get that done.”

Almost in a trance, Maggie absorbs the soft features of Alex. She looks both weary from work and cosy in her pajamas, so much like that first night— the second time they kissed— and Maggie just loves her.

She never stopped loving her, but tonight, seeing her so relaxed with her glasses slipping down her nose, entirely domestic, all those feelings come bubbling to the surface.

They’re in their house, their daughter sleeping upstairs, the workload put aside for now.

She wants to lean in, to have it all if Alex wants the same.

Getting up to stretch her legs, Alex ambles around the coffee table and towards the kitchen. Before she passes by, she softly offers a glass of water, but Maggie catches her wrist and stops her in her tracks. Without resistance, she turns Alex towards her and pulls her down for a kiss.

It’s off-centre, spur of the moment, but it’s electric. Alex pulls back, not far, just enough for the question to be there. She’s searching, silently desperate for the right answer.

She takes off her glasses at Maggie’s nod, throwing them down onto the couch behind her. She takes Maggie’s face in her hands and kisses her.

From there it burns.

They’re stumbling towards the bedroom— getting stuck in the hallway, up the curving staircase — they can’t stop kissing and kissing and kissing. Jarred against the wall, Alex reaches for Maggie’s belt, fumbling with the buckle, as Maggie slides her hands up the back of her pyjama shirt, in that hurried but familiar pattern of undressing each other between kisses.

It’s a carefully placed hand at her bicep that guides them towards the bedroom and shuts the door, least tiny eyes get an eyeful if she gets up for the bathroom.

Alex urges Maggie onto the bed, sliding off her pajama bottoms before joining her. Maggie struggles to kick off her boots, unable to catch her breath, and as soon as they thud to the floor, Alex is turning to press her down against the mattress, kissing her again.

They end up making love above the covers, Alex’s mouth hungry against hers, like the passion had been a pressure chamber bursting free, hot enough to steam against the evening air.

Even as Maggie gets swept away in the distracting pleasure of Alex working her fingers between her legs, she can’t help but feel treasured in this embrace, how Alex is wrapped around her as if she never wants to let her go.

And later, closing her eyes and enjoying thighs seizing up around her temples, she savors how Alex thrashes her head on the pillow but bites hard on her lower lip, whimpering and gasping so as not to wake Jamie. Maggie ends up kissing her to quiet her moans of release.

They’re almost laughing through their sighs, Maggie's head falling back with a grin and a breathy _Yes_  as they re-acquaint themselves with each other, rolling around in the sheets. It’s not earth shattering— not with those destructive connotations— it’s light, it’s freedom, it’s finally dropping all the pretenses they’ve held and letting go together— letting themselves _be_ together.

Finally, _finally,_ exhaustion and satisfaction makes their bones heavy and they lay tangled up together as if all of their limbs were one.

Maggie is still kissing her with no passion, just pure affection, and she can’t stop grinning. “I love how you’re swamped with the latest Furzackian insurgency and yet you took time to make that nightlight.”

“It’s been busy.”

Another kiss. “I love the way you snort when you laugh.”

Alex gives a tired, lazy grin. “Hey, now.”

Maggie shifts closer. “I love how you let me choose the paint for the downstairs bathroom.”

“I love how you finally let me show off my shell collection there,” Alex quips, closing her eyes.

"I love how you hate pineapple but insist on putting it into sweet and sour mixes because you know I love it."

Maggie brushes the tips of their noses together, whispering, “I love watching you with our daughter."

Alex’s eyes slowly open, shiny in the moonlight, and Maggie knows that she understands the real gravity of what she’s trying to say.

Eventually she hauls herself up to get them water, and they wrangle on tank tops and shorts for the morning, and then they fall asleep tangled up together.

In the morning, she wakes up spooning Alex. Even though she has Alex’s hair in her mouth and a cramp in her arm, she feels whole again. They still have a lot to discuss, but it feels like a new beginning.

Alex stirs and then shuffles around to face her. She looks shy, unsure even, but Maggie is quick to reassure her, pressing her forehead to Alex’s. “We’re in this together now. Really. I want to be together.”

She’s treated to the most beautiful smile she’s ever seen.

They finally get themselves out of bed after a second round, Alex jumping into the shower while Maggie rustles around in her drawers for some sweatpants.

She picks out a soft orange shirt as well— one she’d never returned— and pulls it on. She can’t think of anything more appropriate for this morning.

Down in the kitchen, Alex tugs the hem of it. “This looks familiar.”

Maggie plays naive. “Oh does it?”

Alex pulls her in, hips flush together, then leans back with a sly grin. “Yeah, and I remember what this led to....”

They kiss, falling into each other like they did last night. They meld into one, Maggie pushing her hips off the counter towards Alex’s, sinking further into-

“Eww!”

They break apart at the tiny protest, looking towards the source.

“Ew?” Maggie parrots, stalking around the kitchen island, “Ew?!”

She scoops Jamie up and starts kissing her cheek— sloppy, noisy pecks that make the girl squeal— and Alex comes around to the other side and does the same. Jamie squirms, giggling and kicking her legs, but she’s smiling even as she shrieks, “No!”

And as much as Jamie protested, Maggie catches her after breakfast talking to Pickles on the couch.

“They’re so gross, Pickles, they were dancing and kissing all over the place!” She complains, mouth drawn into a frown. She looks so serious, but it’s so much like Alex that Maggie wants to laugh.

She dances Pickles around, nodding and then, “But I guess that’s okay, because that means they won’t move away.”

That night, Maggie goes back to what she now knows is _their_ bed. After getting their water, Alex slips in behind her, kissing at the back of her neck. As a hand teases around the waistband of her underwear, Maggie can’t help one last dig.

“This definitely means I’m not going back to the couch, right?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't yell at us.

Her old apartment had felt so empty after Maggie cleared her things out— completely devoid of any life or character.

Gone were the bonsai trees littering every surface, the knick-knacks Maggie had collected through her years of travel. Gone were the dog-eared criminal justice textbooks and well-worn paperback detective novels. All of the colour had been drained away, back to the shades of utilitarian grey. She had once embraced the aesthetic, but after Maggie left, they had seemed so cold and unwelcoming.

When they’d moved into the new house, she’d resolved to let Maggie take the reigns, and once the last box is unpacked, she is an interior design whirlwind, filling each room with flairs of personality.

After their reconciliation, the happiness and joy that filled their hearts bled out into their home.

Alex stretches on the couch and changes the channel to the news, basking in the domestic bliss of an evening spent at home with her family. Freshly bathed and in her new Supergirl pyjamas, Jamie stretches out on the floor with Officer Pickles and her yellow bin of LEGO. She mutters to her pal before placing each brick and a multicoloured tower slowly takes shape.

Maggie crosses the LEGO minefield towards the couch, stepping into the spaces between bricks, trying not to spill the contents of the two wine glasses in her hands on their new rug. She settles next to Alex, handing over a glass and pulling a woven blanket over their laps.

“Sometimes I catch her and she’s just you.” Maggie gestures towards the construction site on the floor. Jamie’s tongue pokes out in concentration as she sets to work on a second skyscraper.

Alex smiles into her wine. “No wonder you melt so fast for those eyes.”

Maggie laughs, jabbing Alex with her elbow, but she doesn’t deny it.

Jamie reaches back into the bucket, her tiny fingers sifting through the bricks. She frowns and instructs Pickles to stay right there before running upstairs.

“She’s so much like you, too,” Alex says, “I mean the little frown she makes, with the…” She tries to mimic the look, pointing at her cheeks where her dimples would be.

“She’s made from good genes.”

Maggie means it as a jubilation, but there’s an underlying sincerity in the statement. It kickstarts the gears, conjuring up memories of thumbing through reports, black and white graphs, her mother’s firm confirmations.

“Actually, I…” Alex palms at her cheek, setting her wine down on the end table. “I can’t believe I never told you.”

“Told me what?”

She sets her elbows on her knees; the numbers, the words, the scribbles she had made in margins all dancing around her. The conclusions she and her mother had come to. It had all gotten lost in the mesh between her and Maggie, and somehow she had never gotten a chance to share the settled science once and for all.

“I had mom look into some of the theories on her conception and uh, and all that-” Alex waves her hand about. “And we did some coding and testing and...there’s no third party, Maggie.”

Maggie cocks her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Remember at the beginning…” Alex rubs her palms together, Maggie’s dark apartment on that first night is from another reality, one where she could never have entertained that she would be here in their new living room.

She steadies the bow. “Remember when I said she was ours one hundred percent? I got that from those first tests that picked up our genetic signatures. But I had mom go deeper into the DNA coding. I thought it was impossible. There had to be, I don’t know, a sperm donor somewhere.” The thought of it curdles her stomach, now that she knows. “But there wasn’t.”

“She’s _just_ ours?”

“Yeah.”

Maggie grows quiet. Contemplative. She swirls the last of her wine in her glass, then, “I like that.”

“Me too.”

Finishing her drink and placing her glass next to Alex’s, Maggie cuddles closer to her under the blanket. They share a few kisses, enjoying the few brief moments of alone time while Jamie is upstairs. The flat of Maggie’s palm is pressed against her shirt, and she struggles not to let her stomach muscles twitch at the heat.

Alex nibbles her way up Maggie’s neck to her ear, earning herself a warning poke her in the side. They have ground rules outside the bedroom, just in case their daughter makes a sudden reappearance. Still, she sighs, content. “Are you ready to tell everyone?”

With their housewarming party tomorrow, they’d agreed it was time to tell their loved ones they were rekindling their romance. They’ve had a month to bask in the newness of it; making love, catching every moment they could. They’d even started having mini-dates— coffee here, lunch there— and she wasn’t sure how no one could tell they were together again. She knows she’s not terribly discreet. For a secret agent, she tends to wear her heart on her sleeve, particularly where Maggie is concerned.

Still, Kara hadn’t acted any differently towards them when she’d come to take Jamie for the day so that they could get their final load of unpacking done without worrying about a kid running around; not even when she had arrived to see a distinct lack of boxes still needing to be unpacked.

(The truth is, Alex had Maggie naked in the spare room minutes after the front door closed behind her sister.)

“Yeah, I’m ready.” Maggie squeezes her shoulder. “You?”

“Well, we did everything backwards. Kid, then house, then-” Alex trips over the next words, but quickly recovers, “-being together.”

She had been so close to saying _marriage._

Maggie’s eyebrows twitch and Alex knows she wants to press her about the slip up, but thankfully she’s saved by the pitter patter of feet on the wood floor. For once, she’s relieved for her daughter’s impeccable timing.

Jamie launches herself up onto the couch to give them both a hug, then clambers back down to the floor. She uncurls her fist to reveal a small LEGO Supergirl figurine that she proudly displays to Officer Pickles.

“Sometimes I wonder where she got that thing,” Maggie muses, watching as Jamie takes the Supergirl figure in one hand and Pickles in the other and flies them about in the air, “They’re attached at the hip.”

Alex watches Pickles’ flight circling the table, then looping further around the couch. She remembers the tickle of his fur under her nose, growing wet with her tears as she imagined her father in a far off land. She would use him to mute her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs she was sure her superpowered sister would hear regardless.

“He’s mine,” Alex says, “Well, I think so. I have a Pickles. So I guess, that’s hers. The other Alex.”

Maggie turns at her stunted announcement, eyebrows arched in interest. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Alex sucks a deep breath in. “I think...the other me, must have given it to her.”

They’ve discussed the other Alex and Maggie more since they’ve been sleeping together. It’s crept into conversation as they lie entwined in their bed, whispering in the dark. Jamie is starting school soon and they’ve wondered what kind of education they had planned for her. Alex has watched the videos numerous times, has scoured the other Alex’s notes, but still she has questions. How should they be bringing her up? Were they religious in any way? Were there weekly rituals that Jamie was now missing out on?

She picks at her cuticles, deep in thought. “I’ve wondered when she did. Maybe it was Jamie’s first toy when she was a newborn.”

Maggie chuckles. “Pickles would have been bigger than her in the crib.”

Alex smiles at the image, but it doesn’t feel right. “Maybe.”

Kissing her cheek, Maggie asks, “Where’s your Pickles?”

“Uh, the attic?” She had left him in her childhood bedroom when she left for university and he hadn’t been there when she and Kara last visited. “My dad got him at the aquarium when I was like five or six. I used to go to bed with him when dad was on those first DEO missions. He was like a token of good luck.”

He _was_ a token of good luck.

She remembers that night after those men visited her house in their black suits, bearing nothing but bad news. She had spent the whole night with her face pressed into Pickles’s soft fur, trying to smother her grief.

“Then that’s what happened.”

Alex looks at her in confusion. Maggie continues, “You- or the other you I guess, she must have given Pickles to Jamie so she can find the same comfort in him that you did. A promise that no matter what, you’re coming home.”

She imagines that: the missions, the near-death experiences, the tank. She pictures herself kneeling down, presenting Jamie with a well-loved stuffed companion, promising her that she wasn’t going to leave her like Jeremiah, even though her daughter is too young to understand.

As Pickles takes his last lap around the couch and Jamie settles back in front of her LEGO bin, Alex vows that no matter what she will always come home.

~

Eliza comes over early to help them set up for the housewarming party. Alex greets her at the door, her mother kissing her cheek and setting two large gift bags in the entryway. The pair go back and forth to the car, unloading it fully. Then her mother stands, drinking in the hall.

“Wow,” she says, “You’ve made this place so beautiful.”

“Oh, Maggie has a magic touch,” Alex says. Her hands freeze on the door handle, heart stopping, but when Eliza doesn’t react, she finally locks it.

At her name, Maggie joins them. She takes a platter of cookies from Eliza’s hands, but is caught before she can slink back to the kitchen. Alex watches in amusement as Eliza pulls her in for a hug. Her girlfriend - _lover?_ \- has always been shy at the affection from the woman who would have been her mother in law, but she doesn’t escape without a warm greeting.  

“Maggie, hi,” Eliza says.

“Eliza,” Maggie returns, gripping the cookie platter high as if to hide behind it, “How was your drive-?”

The ping of the oven saves Maggie from small talk, and she heads back to the kitchen, leaving Alex with her mother.

When they were together - the first time around -  Maggie was shy and tentative with Eliza, overly formal even. She knows it comes from Maggie’s wariness of parental figures, given her own experience, but her girlfriend had quickly relaxed as they’d gotten to know each other.

She seems to have regressed now, back into her shell of self preservation, and Alex wonders if it’s because she’s trying to hide that they’re sleeping together before they get a chance to tell people— as if just the act of standing next to each other makes it obvious.

“Grandma!” The long call sounds from above. Jamie appears at the landing and bounds downstairs, practically throwing herself into her grandmother’s arms.

“Hello there, Jamie.” Eliza kneels down to Jamie’s height, lifting the bags at her feet. “How about you help me make some lunch?”

Jamie nods wildly, trailing her grandmother into the kitchen, babbling about how much she loves her new bedroom all the way there. Alex takes a deep breath, gathering some of the items at her feet.

One step at a time. They would tell their friends and family later. First, a birthday and a housewarming.

Their guests trickle in, bringing housewarming gifts and birthday gifts for Jamie.

Alex takes all of the brightly colored bags and wrapped boxes, hiding them away from prying eyes. According to the documents from the pod, her daughter’s birthday is right around the corner. At the time, she hadn’t thought too much of the date, knowing it was months away. Now, she is in a new house, a new home, and she hopes the surprises they have planned are good enough for Jamie.

When Kara arrives with the birthday cake, Maggie beckons Jamie outside with her to set the table. Jamie places the forks in the wrong place, and Alex watches the patient way Maggie encourages her, changing and switching them as Jamie moves on to the next placement.

Motherhood looks good on her, and Alex marvels at how far they’ve both come.

She leans up against the side of the house, hiding from the summer sun underneath the pergola in the backyard. To Jamie’s delight, Kara has brought a large amount of water balloons, and the backyard transforms into a warzone while they all wait for lunch to be ready.

Jamie recruits J’onn to be her muscle and they make an adorable pair, stalking around the perimeter of the yard like agents. At the sight of them, her heart aches just enough to be noticeable. As much as she appreciates his trust in her— giving her his former title at the DEO— she misses his calming presence there to guide her every day.

Alex is tempted to pinch herself, just to make sure this is all real. She’s in her dream house, surrounded by her friends and family, truly happy and content.

Eliza joins her, slipping an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, and together they watch as Jamie, perched on J’onn’s shoulders, launches a water balloon at Kara’s head. Kara splutters, yelling out for backup from Maggie, who has been flipping burgers on the grill.

“I know you sent me the genetics data to analyse and check but,” Eliza says, shaking her head in wonder, “It’s clear as day that Jamie is both of yours.”

Alex just smiles, watching as Maggie hands James the spatula and runs after their daughter.

“When you were a child, I saw Jeremiah in you more and more each day,” she continues, “You were curious like he was, with a fierce determination. Your eyes have always been...perceptive.”

Jamie scrambles down from her perch on J’onn’s shoulders and crouches behind Kara’s legs, using her as a shield, and Kara pretends to stumble as she’s hit with a balloon meant for Jamie. The girl giggles with glee and darts off again past Maggie, zig-zagging across the lawn. She ducks behind the barbeque, scanning for her next move.

“And now, so is she.”

Alex softens, watching her family, sure that Eliza sees the love in her eyes. She turns towards her, a question on her tongue, but she’s interrupted by James calling everyone to the table for food.

The birthday surprise is well received— Jamie is thrilled when Eliza emerges from the kitchen carrying a cake with a grinning Chase from _Paw Patrol_ printed on the icing— but she only lasts a few hours after presents before the exhaustion of the day sets in. She insists on her Uncle J’onn and Auntie Kara putting her to bed and reading her a story, because _“They do the greatest voices for the stories,”_ so Alex and Maggie crack open the alcohol for everyone.

They steal those few moments alone in the kitchen for themselves, Alex pulling her in by the belt loops. They rest their foreheads together, enjoying the quiet and each other’s company.

“You ready to tell everyone now?” Alex whispers, thumb tracing circles against Maggie’s hip.

Maggie closes her eyes, content to linger in the intimacy of keeping it to themselves. “Yeah, we’ll just wait for the right moment.”

She squeezes Alex’s hand, and they head back to the patio with a case of beer and a bottle of wine.

They’re just starting on their first drinks when Kara returns from inside, a pyjamaed Jamie in her arms, rubbing her eyes, trying desperately to stay awake for just a few more minutes. “She insisted on saying one final goodnight to her moms.”

Kara brings her around the table to bid everyone goodnight, and when she gets to Alex and Maggie, they each place a kiss on her cheek.

“Are you and mommy gonna be kissing in the kitchen again tomorrow?” she grumbles in between yawns. “Cause that was yucky.”

The entire gathering freezes and turns towards them. Alex’s face heats up in embarrassment. This wasn’t how they intended to announce, but the secret was out. From a cursory glance around the table though, everyone is smiling, even Kara.

 _Especially_ Kara.

Maybe they weren’t discreet after all.

J’onn sidles up to her when he gets back from putting Jamie to bed, and Alex pulls out a special bottle of liquor she and Maggie had taken off Brian the week before. It had been smuggled from off-world and while the NCPD typically disposes of such contraband, Alex had recognized the label as one of J’onn’s favorites and squirreled it away.

His eyes light up in recognition as she pours him a glass.

“You know, Jamie has brought me a real sense of pure joy,” he says after a while. “Maybe for the first time since I left Mars. She is unbridled, innocent happiness. It’s very pure.”

“I’m not psychic, and I feel the same way.” She swirls the wine around in her own glass in thought. “Except when she’s outing us before we’re ready.”

J’onn chuckles as they toast to parenthood.

~

Two months into their newfound relationship, Alex gets a call.

She gets _the_ call.

They’re both suspicious when they see the number on the caller ID.

_The White House._

Maggie’s detective training instantly kicks in. It could be fake. A spoofed number perhaps.

But it isn’t. On the third ring, Alex picks up the phone, her face blanching as the call connects. Maggie isn’t sure who is on the other line, but she follows Alex upstairs and waits outside in the hall to listen in.

Alex paces the bedroom, the hardwood floor creaking with each step. Maggie can’t make out the content of the call, but when Alex finally emerges, her face tells the tale. She’s white as a sheet, eyes wide and disbelieving.

The President of the United States wants to meet with her to go over a budgetary proposal for the DEO.

Maggie and Alex had both met President Marsdin when she came to National City to sign the Alien Amnesty Act, but this was different. Then, Alex had been simply Agent Danvers, assigned to security detail. No different than the other three DEO agents stationed around the perimeter. No different than Maggie herself.

This time, she will be going to Washington DC as Director Danvers. She’ll be the one in charge. Not J’onn. Not Kara. Her. It’s a big deal.

The morning she has to leave for Washington, she’s in a frazzled state.

“Babe, have you seen-?”

Maggie comes into the bedroom before Alex can even finish her question, boots in one hand, suit and blouse in the other, neatly starched and pressed.

“...You are the best.”

Maggie grins, laying the hangers on the bed. “I know.”

Alex had done the same for her before the National City Pride Parade. She’d gotten up early to make sure that Maggie’s dress uniform was dry cleaned and ready so that she could march with the rest of the NCPD. Maggie is pleased to be able to return the favor now on such an important occasion.

She ducks back downstairs for a bagel, a thermos filled with coffee, and the vitamin supplement Alex normally takes in the morning, and when she returns, her lover - _girlfriend?_ \- has dialled her anxiety up another few notches. Maggie begins to doubt whether the caffeine was a good idea after all.  

A grateful Alex takes the thermos and washes down the vitamin with a healthy swig of coffee. Maggie takes it back before she manages to spill it down over her underwear and chest.

As she passes from the dresser, Alex catches her by the hip and kisses the corner of her mouth. “You’re like a little housewife this morning.”

“Less of the little, Danvers,” Maggie chides, swatting her playfully in the arm.

Alex nibbles on her bagel, the way she does when her mind is running far too quickly. She’s radiating nervous energy, fumbling with the buttons on her shirt. Maggie takes pity on her trembling fingers, gently nudging them aside to button up the shirt herself.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Alex complains between bites, “I mean, what if she thinks I’m not good enough? What if she tries to cut our budget and I don’t negotiate the right way? What if she insists we change strategies? Or-”

“Babe,” Maggie interrupts and they pause to grin at the word they haven’t been able to use in so long, “You’re gonna be fine.”

Alex pulls on her trousers and paces around the room with them open and barefoot, pinching the thermos from the dresser and sipping the coffee. “I don’t know, Maggie, I’ve never done anything with this kind of authority. I mean, what if senators try and lobby me? Or _lobby_ groups try and lobby me? This is politics, way more than I’ve appreciated before-”

Maggie catches her by the fly and tucks in her blouse before fixing up her pants and smoothing down her collar. They’ve always undressed each other, yet somehow the act of dressing each other felt more personal— more intimate. Regal, even, with the importance of Alex’s duty.

“Come here.” Maggie sits her in front of the dresser they spent three hours trying to build together and opens up her makeup bag, knowing Alex is trembling too much to apply her own look.

A ritualistic reverence falls between them. Maggie is still in her pyjamas, and the hour is early, yet the simple acts of dedication is significant. These small tokens had built their relationship to a grand height once; they might once again.

With each brush on her cheeks, the careful flick of mascara, the curve of lipstick, she tries to ease away her lover’s fears.

Soon, they’re at the entryway. Alex pulls on her blazer and Maggie wipes some lint from the shoulders.

“You’re gonna do great,” she stresses, looking Alex right in the eyes. “Stop worrying.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re losing your badass rep.”

Alex smiles at the subtle tease and pulls her in for a kiss. Then another. And another. She  doesn’t stop pressing soft kisses to Maggie’s lips, smiling as she does, the tension melting from her frame.

Finally Alex pulls away, raising the handle on her rolling suitcase. Still, she hesitates.

Maggie is aware of how much this position means, how proud she is to have gotten this promotion after working so hard to prove herself at the DEO. This hesitation is not a reluctance to face her responsibilities.

This hesitation is something else.

Jamie had been distraught when she had learned that Alex would be going on a business trip. She had even refused to go to sleep the night before. Her mom couldn’t leave in the morning if the morning never came. She eventually settled down after an extra bedtime story and a promise of a phone call each night, but Alex had still felt guilty.

The phone calls would be as much for Alex’s benefit as Jamie’s. This will be the first night Alex won’t be there to tuck Jamie in, and Maggie knows how hard it is to be away from their daughter.

It will also be the first night that Maggie will be sleeping alone in _their_ bed.

She wonders if Alex is thinking of that too. If she’ll lie awake thinking of her while she’s away.

Alex dives back in for one more kiss, confirming her theory. "You gonna welcome me home like the last time I went on a trip?"

Maggie grins again. It’s refreshing, being able to reference the past and not feel pain, to reignite the heat between them after so many cold, lonely nights. "Maybe Jamie could go stay with her Aunt Kara."

She lingers as Alex puts her suitcase in the car, starts the engine, and pulls away. She turns her face to the morning sun and soaks it in. Despite the hour, the neighbourhood is already bustling. Mrs. Halloway across the way is already tending to her flower beds and some neighbours are just leaving for work. She closes the door softly, so as not to wake a still sleeping Jamie, and returns to the kitchen with the morning paper.

She loves this domesticity. This ease of living.

She makes her own mug of coffee and double-toasted bagel, leafs the paper open to the section discussing the Commissioner's proposals to target anti-alien related crime, and settles into what is rapidly becoming her spot at the kitchen table.

It’s _then,_ listening to the ticking of the kitchen clock, to the birds tweeting in the backyard, to the low grumble of neighbourhood traffic -

It’s _then_ that she remembers Alex’s housewife comment.

The print words blur in front of her, paper crumpling limply into her lap as realisation sets in.

A wife. She wants that. She wants it to be true.

 _Maybe not a housewife_ , she inwardly clarifies, mind racing as she folds the paper and sets it aside.

Not a housewife - but she wants to marry Alex.

That thought only intensifies when Alex returns a few days later, suitcase heavier with souvenirs for their daughter. Maggie’s heart swells with love for this woman who kneels down on the floor in the foyer, even though she must be dead on her feet from travel, to listen with rapt attention as Jamie details what she and Maggie did each moment she was gone.

When Jamie dashes upstairs to grab her latest artistic masterpiece, Alex stands, wrapping Maggie in her arms. “So you managed without the head of the household, huh?” Alex asks, all mischief and mirth.

And Maggie remembers the clock, the birds, the traffic, but they wash away with the glint in Alex’s eye.

“Shut up, nerd.”

~

A few weeks later, Alex sits at the kitchen island drinking coffee and watching as Maggie does yoga in the living room. Jamie may not have her own yoga mat but she has set up shop with a peach hand towel, instead.

She copies Maggie’s movements like a duckling, albeit with less grace. Every time Jamie loses her balance and tumbles over, Maggie helps her back up, showing her the correct way to do each pose. Alex watches them intently, engrossed in their partnership.

(And if her gaze choses to linger on Maggie’s ass as she bends over, well, she didn’t have to hide it anymore).

Honestly, being able to be open with her affections and emotions felt like she could breathe again. Being a family comes so naturally that it almost feels like they were never apart at all. It’s so evident how happy Jamie is too, back in her familiar surroundings. While she was comfortable at her Aunt Kara’s, she never had her own space.

To Jamie, this house was always home. Alex thinks that could be the case for her and Maggie, too.

They both join her after their workout, peppering her cheeks with sweaty kisses. She scrunches up her face— faking disgust and chastising them— but inside, she’s filled with warmth.

The next Monday, they book it off. It's a big occasion, and they know it: Jamie's first day at Kindergarten. She and Charlie were starting together, so they were reassured she at least had one friend on her first day.

While they’re excited to see her learn and grow, Alex can’t quite believe the clutch in her chest at Jamie tottering off into the playground.

"Have a good day!" Maggie calls.

"Bye mommies!" Jamie chirps and skips towards Charlie in her tiny leather jacket and Supergirl backpack, stopping only once to wave goodbye.

They get back in their car and Maggie puts the key in the ignition, turning until the engine springs to life. They don’t speak as they drive the five minutes back to their house. Alex watches the suburbs pass her by, trying to imagine telling herself this time last year that this was all possible.

Maggie pulls into the drive and kills the engine. They sit, overwhelmed by the stillness, until Alex can’t hold it any longer - she sniffles. She stares ahead at their garage door, tears beginning to trek down her cheeks.

"Are you crying?!” Maggie asks, turning to her.

Alex wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. "Shut up, jerk."

Another sniffle betrays her and then points at Maggie’s glistening eyes. It coaxes a wet laugh from both of them as they both begin to cry.

Their little girl is growing up before their eyes.

This is the first major milestone that the other Alex and Maggie would never get to experience.  

Maggie sniffs hard and closes the front door. She leans against it, and Alex follows, looking at her in question at the coy smile.

"What time do we pick her up?" she asks.

Alex smiles slowly, a coil already in her stomach before any intention has been made. "One in the afternoon."

Maggie makes a show of looking at her watch. "Three and a half hours from now."

"Yup…"

She gives no resistance when Maggie tugs her up the stairs and into their bedroom.

The warmth of the summer still lingers, but the leaves have started to turn, signaling a change, and they spend the two hours making the most of the empty house.

Afterwards they lie in bed, sweaty and satiated, Maggie pressing gentle kisses to her collarbone. They’ve made love numerous times since they’d gotten back together, but this time feels different.

Back when Alex stood in the doorway of this room, unfurnished and caked in dust, she imagined this moment. The sun beaming through the circular window, Maggie mouthing along her collarbone, a late morning in fall spent in bed.

She tries to gather her thoughts from where they’ve been scrambled by the pleasure, to put words to that effect into the air -

"Marry me.”

Alex swallows as Maggie rolls away from her. She stares at the dust glittering through the sunbeam, unsure if she imagined those words in dreamy haze.

“Did you-?”

“Marry me,” Maggie repeats.

“You’re kidding.” Alex leans up on her elbow to get a better look at her. She’s gorgeous, her hair mussed from sex, the sun illuminating her bare skin. Alex’s pulse quickens at the thought that Maggie wants to tie herself to her and Jamie forever.

“I’m not.” Maggie leans up too, “Marry me.”

Alex flips her around, pressing her lips to Maggie’s.

“Yes,” she breathes in between kisses. “Yes.”

~

The next weekend they manage to both have off, they take Jamie on a trip up the coast to Carmel. When they first started dating, it was their first weekend break away as a couple. While they wouldn’t be able to replicate that romantic getaway with Jamie and Kara along, it still seemed like the perfect location for their short trip.

Alex barely has the time to deposit their luggage in the living room of their rental house before Jamie is tugging her by the hand down towards the beach. It’s much too cold to go in without a wetsuit, so instead she steers Jamie towards the tidepools to look for starfish. Maggie and Kara watch from the shore, sitting side by side in the sand.

Maggie fondly shakes her head. "God, they're gonna bring home more shells.”

Kara laughs, adjusting her sweater. "When we were kids, Alex and I always used to have such good times on vacation. It was when we were home we reverted back to being brats."

Family vacations.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been on a vacation like this,” Maggie admits, digging her sneakers into the sand.

“To the beach?”

“No.” She digs further, losing her toes, readying herself to bury further and hide away completely. Her voice comes from within, that petrified girl of fourteen, lost. “As a family.”

She waits for her wounds to scream at being reopened, as if so tangible that the very salt from the ocean spray would inflame them.

But...they don’t.

The most the ocean air does is burn her nostrils.

_A family vacation._

She’d always believed in the idea of a found family, especially after her parents kicked her out, but that trauma had contributed to the height of the walls she’d built up around herself. She never wanted to let anyone get close. Not until Alex.

Maggie knew that Alex loved her— that she and Alex and Jamie were a family unit— but the idea that other people considered her family still surprised her. The way Eliza always welcomes her when she sees her, with a warm hug and a kind smile, filled her with a kind of joy she’d been missing for years. And Kara…

Their relationship has always been tentative, but Jamie has been a catalyst for a whole new friendship to form. Kara’s demeanour towards her had been considerably different during this journey compared with when she dated Alex the first time. She might even go as far as thinking that they’re friends, independent of their mutual ties to Alex.

She looks at Kara's profile in the sun— the same sun that gifted her with super strength and speed— and wonders how far she could see out to the horizon without those glasses.

Wonders if she could see the trajectory this conversation is about to take.

"Listen Kara I…" She glances back, biting the inside of her cheek, "I proposed to Alex."

Kara blinks in surprise and whips towards her. "Oh."

Maggie takes this as a bad sign and backpedals. "I mean, there's no real plans yet, with still settling into the house, and-"

"No that's," Kara interrupts, beaming, "That's fantastic news."

Kicking at the sand with her sneaker, Maggie gazes back out to the tide pools. Jamie’s inquisitive questions and bleats of discovery carry over the crash of the waves and the rustle of the treeline dancing above them. For a while, they’re content to let that be all that is shared between them.

Then, a confession.

"I was wrong to push Alex to date,” Kara says, "You two are good together.”

Maggie turns to Kara, who has two pebbles in her grasp. She smoothes her thumb over the rocky ridges of one, then studies the slate-grey colour of the other. With a sigh, she sets them back onto the sand at her hips, saying, “There was no woman like you."

They both fall silent, just watching as Alex helps Jamie across the rocks. A few skips, hops and jumps, and they reach another tidepool.

She couldn’t bring herself to date after the breakup. For Maggie, no woman could come close to Alex Danvers either.

She never believed in soulmates.

Not until she learned of the other Alex and Maggie.

On another Earth, in another universe, she and Alex still found each other, even though their circumstances were different. They’d been married. They’d had a kid. They were so confident that their love for each other transcended the universe that they sent their daughter to another Earth so that she could have the life they couldn’t give her.

When she and Alex had updated their HR paperwork at their respective jobs to include Jamie, they’d been confronted with a similar decision. Alex had taken a step back at the DEO, but they still both had incredibly dangerous jobs.

In the end, they hadn’t even needed to discuss who their second emergency contact would be. Alex hadn’t even asked. For her it was a given that her sister would be there to take care of her family if the worst came to pass.

"Kara, if anything ever happened to Alex and I… I mean, we want you to be Jamie's godmother.” She glances back over at Kara to gauge her reaction. "Just in case."

"Wow." Kara’s eyes are wide, almost in shock. "I’d be honoured."

They stand then, side by side on the beach, the breeze carrying Jamie’s giggles across the sand.

Kara turns to Maggie again, "Has Alex said yes?"

Maggie smiles. "Yeah. She has."

"I’ll take Jamie to the Amusements." Kara’s contemplation morphs to a devilish expression, and she winks, "You guys use your afternoon wisely."

She bumps her elbow, wipes the sand from the back of her shorts, and walks away.

~

Maggie floats the idea to Alex after lunch, casual and sly. Part of her doesn’t believe Alex will go for it, and that part is a safety net.

But reckless and impulsive are core values in the Alex Danvers playbook, and an hour later, they find themselves in the courthouse, standing in front of the judge in the dresses they’d packed for their date night.

It’s not the tequila-soaked wedding they’d imagined, but as they exchange vows and silver bands, Maggie thinks that she wouldn’t have it any other way.

On the way back to the house, Alex brings the car to a stop in front of a slightly seedy motel.

Maggie cocks an eyebrow at the flickering _Vacancy_ sign. "What? Why are we stopping here?"

"Come on." Alex smacks a quick kiss on her lips before opening the car door. "We gotta consummate this."

“We gotta-?” Maggie laughs, chasing after her wife through the parking lot. "You wanna consummate our marriage in a seedy motel? Do you know how many times I was called out to places like this on the beat?"

"Kara and Jamie are probably back already so-" Alex spins her around and kisses her square again. "Tell me you don't want to and we'll go home."

Kara had taken Jamie to the _Carmel Amusements_ , where a carnival is entertaining the boardwalks for the week. Most likely, they were on their way back to the hotel, meaning there was no chance of skullduggery. Not with an unpredictable five year old and a sister with superhearing.

Alex’s gaze is heated and Maggie relents. She wants this as much as Alex does.

There’s no one in reception, and Maggie takes advantage, kissing Alex's neck and slipping her hands around her hips. Alex’s knees go weak for a second and she grips Maggie’s wrists, yanking them away from her and shooting her a playful warning glance.

She taps the bell on the reception desk and finally an old man shuffles out of the staff room. He  narrows his eyes at them, but grunts and gives them a room key— number 208. It smells of bleach and cheap detergent but it's clean enough and it's theirs for the afternoon.

The door doesn’t properly lock, so Maggie drags the chair from the corner of the room. Alex kisses the back of Maggie’s neck and pulls her dress strap aside to trail along her shoulder, causing Maggie to bat at her.

“Hold on, horndog,” she teases, jamming the chair under the handle.

They’re usually so careful when they make love. So cognizant of the fact that at any moment, there could be a knock at their bedroom door. Now, they taste the kind of freedom only afforded in cheap motel rooms.

Alex unzips her dress and then bunches the material around her thighs. Maggie’s eyes flutter shut as a firm touch travels under, searching for heat. But then they divert, tugging the dress up and off.

The rush of cool air sobers Maggie, who spins to catch it before it hits the ground. “Hey, on the chair!”

“Maggie-” Alex is laughing, unzipping her own dress and pulling off her bra.

“Wait, Alex-”

“Maggie-!” Alex makes a move to grab Maggie’s dress once more, she hides it behind her back.  

Alex leans in, hot breath ghosting over Maggie’s pulse. “Drop it, I want you naked.”

“You haven’t seen these floors under UV lights,” Maggie protests again, her resolve slowly crumbling. She gets her own dress on the chair, groaning in disgust as Alex sacrifices her own to the threadbare carpet.

“Maggie,” Alex laughs, kissing her wife to distract her from noticing when she unclasps her bra. It falls to the floor and with a triumphant grin, teeth gleaming in the fluorescent lighting, she says, “I don’t care. We’ll burn the clothes if we have to. I just want you.”

Bare to their underwear, Maggie pushes Alex down and straddles her, much to her delight. They shiver at the slight chill in the air, the broken air conditioner rattling way too loud.

She snakes her hand under Alex’s waistband before she can move to slip them off. She’s always loved the desperate way Alex flexes her hips up, chasing the touch. Her lover is trying to concentrate on wiggling the underwear off, but she keeps jerking in pleasure and eventually Maggie helps her.

She sets her mouth and hands to work bringing release ever closer, and Alex’s moans carry over the rattling of the broken air conditioner. Not even the construction across the street could drown out her final cry of jubilant pleasure.

Breathless and bare, her eyes tinted with golden whiskey from the afternoon sun coming in through the frail drapes, Alex is a vision.

“I love you, Maggie.” Alex bites her lower lip, giddiness bubbling up as Maggie shifts. “Mrs Danvers.”

“Mrs Danvers?” Maggie echoes, prodding at Alex’s breastbone, “Mrs Sawyer, I should think. You too.”

“Mrs Alexandra Sawyer,” Alex purrs, rolling them over and settling down flat, belly to belly, nose to nose, buffeting heat through Maggie’s veins from head to toe. “I think I like that.”

“I bet you do.”

The soft, raspy jibes continue as Alex’s fingers dance down Maggie’s body. “Director Sawyer has a local ring to it, less punch than Danvers-”

She works Maggie’s own underwear off, kissing her way down, and then kissing her way back up again.

Maggie’s always enjoyed the way they fit together, especially when it came to sex; how Alex’s hips fit snugly into the cradle of her thighs, with just enough difference between them that Alex could bend this way and that, catching all the spots with her lips and tongue that drove Maggie mad.

Alex builds the heat slowly, taking her time, savouring being inside her, pressing kisses across her cheeks, neck, breasts, stomach, all the while keeping this steady rhythm, only alternating when Maggie finally gasps out a plea and grips the creaking headboard.

And afterwards - with the starched, off-white sheets around their hips, the aircon battling on, the drapes letting in just enough sunlight to glint off their rings - Maggie lies with her wife, content.

“Consummated enough for you?”

There’s a lazy chuckle from beside her; Alex thumbs at her sweaty hairline.

“For now. Just for now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psych: Don't yell at us for our FLUFF!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you who have read this and commented or screamed at us on twitter. This fic means so much to us both and while we're sad to see it end, we're excited for wherever Sanvers takes us next.
> 
> We hope you enjoy the final part of convenant, and remember, Sanvers is endgame.

**_Epilogue_ **

Before they know it, an entire year has passed.

One year of childish giggles and tantrums, of toys strewn across their floor.

One year of making up voices for bedtime stories and cutting crusts off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And Alex has experienced many pivotal moments in her life. 

When she was fourteen, she gained an alien sister only to lose her father. In college, she hit rock bottom and was offered a way out through the same organization that took her father’s life. She was twenty-seven when she came out to herself and her family after meeting a woman that shook her foundation to its core.

This year made all of the hardships of her past worth it. This year, all of her dreams came true. Now she gets to wake up to the love of her life every morning. She gets to sit down with her daughter to do a puzzle in the evenings. She gets to live in the house in the suburbs she always pictured when she was a girl. 

As with most things, her happiness came with a price— the lives of the alternate Alex and Maggie. Those women knew that they would never get to enjoy any more relaxing Sundays spent in the garden, but they wanted their daughter to have that chance. 

Alex and Maggie can’t openly mourn their other selves, but they can commemorate their sacrifice. 

One year after Alex found Jamie in that smoking crater, they plan to pack up their car and drive to Midvale.

Agent Cavanaugh moves into her line of sight, the tablet in his hands displaying an inventory checklist. “Director Danvers, would you like to give final approval on these objects before we move them for long-term storage?”

Following him deeper into the DEO storage area, they pass older research projects and confiscated alien technology piled high on metal racks. She takes the tablet from him, and then meanders down the rows, checking off each item in turn, humming a little tune Jamie had been singing in the car.  Spring cleaning at the DEO is always tedious, but the knowledge that she’ll be beach bound in just a few hours is keeping her spirits high. 

She reaches the end of the list, lingering by the last item. Jamie’s pod. It’ll be sent to the desert base for storage alongside Kara’s pod— appropriate for the crafts that brought her two of her favorite people.

She runs her fingers around the runes on the side, tracing each loop and line, when it begins to hum, emitting a soft blue light. Startled, she swipes her hand away and watches in wonder as a compartment opens. 

She peers inside, seeing two letters. The lights die down, the humming fading away, and then she’s left again with the loaded silence of the storage facility. She shifts the tablet, and then reaches inside the compartment to retrieve the letters. One is addressed to _Alex_ , the other to _Maggie_. 

She recognizes the handwriting. Loopy and scribbled on one, a doctor’s handwriting. Stiff, quick and crooked on the other - a cop’s.  

She turns to Agent Cavanaugh, handing him back the tablet. “I thought this was completely scanned and checked?” 

“It was, Ma’am.” He stands there, befuddled. “It must have been missed.”

She nods and dismisses Cavanaugh, clenching the letters in her fist as she strides back to her office. She pops them in a drawer for safekeeping, but automatically remembers to take them with her when she leaves work. It isn’t really until she’s picking Jamie up from Kindergarten that she becomes aware of their presence in her jacket. 

Jamie leaps out of the car when they pull up to the precinct, buzzing with pre-vacation excitement. The only stop on the way to the bullpen is the receptionist holding out a glass jar for Jamie to pick a lollypop out of.

“I like the orange ones!” Jamie says, rooting around for one. With a crinkle of plastic, she holds one up in victory.

“Just like Detective Sawyer,” the receptionist muses. 

“She’s my mom!” Jamie chirps, bouncing on her toes. 

Alex grins, holding out her hand and taking the plastic off the lollypop and then handing it back.

Maggie is still in a meeting with her captain, so Alex hoists Jamie up to sit on her desk where she can hold court with the other detectives. Ever since the first visit, she’s been a celebrity, lapping up the attention she gets from the bullpen.

“I used to be this tall.” Jamie exaggerates her small height, her palm hovering near her shoulder. “And soon I’ll be this tall.” She stretches her arm high above her head.

“Wow!” Sergeant Hopper marvels on his way past. “You gonna be taller than your mom?”

Jamie nods and swings her legs back and forth. 

“Not like that’s hard,” Alex jokes, sitting beside her, “You ready for a roadtrip, munchkin?”

“Roadtrip, roadtrip!” Jamie singsongs, but then rolls her eyes, “Mommy is taking _so_ long.”

Alex tucks Jamie’s hair behind her ear and then moves around to sit in Maggie’s desk chair, listening as the girl spins a yarn about Officer Pickles’s latest exploits. 

It’s clear from the desk how much Maggie loves her family. The birthday card from her daughter is still shedding glitter on its surface and next to the old computer monitor is a framed photograph. Alex inwardly lauds at the capture of her, Maggie, and Jamie at Kara’s holiday party last December. All three of them are wearing oversized sweaters that her mother had knit. She runs her fingers over the macaroni pasted to the frame. Jamie had made it at school and was so proud to give it to Maggie. 

“Have you been distracting these guys from their work?” Maggie calls out as she makes her way across the precinct. 

Alex cracks a smile, tickling Jamie lightly in the side, just enough to make the girl squirm. “Yeah, she’s been a little rabble rouser.” 

Jamie rolls her eyes again and hops off the desk, Alex steadying her landing with a knee. “Finally!”

She stomps off towards the doors, light-up sneakers flashing with each step, and Maggie grins at her colleagues. “That’s goodbye, then.”

The roomful of hardened detectives is amused by this stroppy kid marching between their desks towards the exit, stuffed otter tucked under her arm. 

Maggie kisses Alex on the cheek. “She got this bossy streak from you, you know.”

After quick goodbyes, to Maggie’s partners, they follow their daughter out to the car. 

Still, Alex doesn’t mention the letters in her jacket. She’s not sure when to bring it up in the process of transition to vacation. Before or after Maggie slips off her windbreaker and rolls up her shirt sleeves? Perhaps the best time to do it is when she finishes buckling Jamie in and the back door closes, leaving them sectioned off outside the vehicle for a few precious seconds. Maybe as she’s sliding on her sunglasses, or as Alex is putting the keys in the ignition? 

But, she waits, she hesitates. And the miles start to pass. 

Jamie falls asleep almost as soon as they hit the road, snoozing until the grumbling of her stomach stirs her awake. Alex and Maggie exchange a glance in the front seat as she starts to fuss. They’ve still got about two hours until they reach Midvale and the Goldfish crackers they packed for the ride won’t be enough to satiate a girl with an appetite growing to rival Kara’s. 

They pull off the highway and into the McDonald’s parking lot, Jamie dancing as soon as she sees the golden arches. They don’t order fast food very much anymore, so it’s a special treat for her to have McNuggets and a McFlurry. Jamie attacks the shake with a spoon, getting it all over her face; without skipping a beat, Maggie reaches for her bag and pulls out some baby wipes. 

Alex loves how being a mom comes so easily to them now. They may not have raised Jamie from birth— haven’t suffered those sleepless nights or terrible twos— but they’re her parents. They’re her mothers as much as the other Alex and Maggie were. 

Her fingers skim the edges of the letters still tucked in her jacket. She had intended to wait until they got to Midvale to read it, but her curiosity leads her to excuse herself to the bathroom in the back of the restaurant. 

She hasn’t told Maggie about her letter yet. She grips the sink, then thinks better off it as a dried stain scratches her palm. She watches her hands in hot soapy water, and avoiding the rattling dryer to wring her wrists and pace. 

With still-damp fingertips sticking to the envelope, she unfolds her letter over the sink, leaving Maggie’s in her pocket.

_Alex,_

_I know there’s a DEO on your Earth, I’ve checked our database for the portal registration. I know you’re an agent there, because I sifted through a dozen until I found one with our name. I know your world is stable, it’s human-inhabited, it’s American soil. I know it’ll be 2019, because that’s the required time-space unit we need to balance the distance and not corrupt the timelines with a wormhole in crossing._

_But I don’t know if you’re happy, if you’re married, if you even know you’re gay. I don’t know if you already have kids, or if you have Supergirl. I don’t know if you have a house in the suburbs, I don’t know if you wake up with someone beside you every day._

_I don’t know if you have a Maggie, but I hope you do. She’s my rock. I never realized how much of life I was missing out on before I met her. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what I did to deserve a woman like her, but I’m so thankful to call her my wife. She’s the love of my life, there for me through thick and thin. Ride or die, even when I decided to send our daughter away._

_I’m going to die by her side and that’s okay. It’s not something we can fight. As long as she’s by my side, I’m content._

_I know it’s a lot to ask, but please, take care of Jamie. Fill her days with love and care and happiness, just as she filled ours._

_And if you’re unsure if you’re up to the task, if you’ve never thought of yourself as a mother, all I ask is for you to try. The minute I held her, heard those giggles, I was in love. I hope that you’ll feel the same._

_You can do more than you think you can._

_Alex_

_PS: I’ve made sure that Jamie has a piece of us with her in her pod. The stuffed otter goes by Officer Pickles. She can’t sleep without him._

_Take care of him for me too._

Fat, hot tears spill over her cheeks and into the sink, rolling down the filthy, porcelain sides. She’s kept it together all these months. She’s had to be strong for Jamie, for Maggie, for herself. But reading those words, the pleas from that other Alex, the confidence she had in her… she’s overcome with emotion.

When Alex returns to her family, Maggie is bent over the table, her tongue poking out as she examines Jamie’s Happy Meal toy as if it were a key piece of evidence. 

She spots Alex weaving through the tables and hands the toy back to Jamie. “Hey, you okay?”

“Happy tears,” she assures her wife, even knowing her eyes must be red rimmed. 

Maggie tilts her head to the side, scanning for any other sign of distress. “Sure?”

“Yeah.” Alex kisses her cheek and they let the matter rest. She’ll give Maggie her letter when they arrive. 

They pull up to the Midvale house in the early evening and Jamie darts out of the car, running headlong into her grandmother’s waiting arms.

As Eliza enlists Jamie’s help with a task in the kitchen, Maggie and Alex carry their bags upstairs. In the dim bedroom, lit only with the glowing orange sunset, Alex produces Maggie’s letter. Maggie twitches, frowns, then twitches a second time into realisation, not yet taking it.

Alex sees their shadows on the wall, their outlines; alive enough to be real, but not quite. She sees her outstretched arm, watches as the other silhouette takes it. Maggie places the letter on the bed, and then looks at the point on the wall that seems to have her wife’s attention.

Together they gaze at the shadows. It seems like a dark mirror, their reflections gazing back at them. Then Eliza calls on Maggie, and she moves, her silhouettes going with her. It walks across the wall, and disappears. 

Alex stands in that spot, observing her outline as if it would move on its own, become sentient in its own right.

Then the sun ducks below the tree line, the shadow growing fuzzy and fading into the rest of the dusky blue. She flicks on the bedside lamp, as if to bring it back, but the angle is wrong. 

And the shadow is gone. 

~

The next day, they all gather in the kitchen for breakfast. Pots and pans rattle around as Eliza whips up a batch of pancakes and Alex yawns as she shuffles in. Jamie had woken up bright and early, and Maggie had been kind enough to let her sleep in a little, taking Jamie downstairs and setting her up with a pad of paper and some crayons at the table. 

She sits down next to her wife and warms her hands on the coffee mug already sitting at her place. Maggie pecks her on the cheek before turning back to the sports section of the newspaper. 

Eliza sets down a plate in front of Jamie, who chirps a _thanks_ in between bites. She offers a forkful to the stuffed otter sitting next to her, shrugging and eating the blueberry pancake herself, as if Pickles had politely refused.

"Remember last time when Pickles stole my blueberries?" she asks through a mouthful of food. 

Alex and Maggie share a glance, but Jamie is already focused on her drawing again. Still, it’s a reminder that while they’ve grown accustomed to Jamie’s idiosyncrasies, there are things they are still learning. Stories they’ve never heard. Memories Jamie shares with an Alex and Maggie that aren’t them.

Outside, the morning sun is casting long shadows on the patios, bold and black. Again, she lets herself fall into their shapes, lets her mind go to a place with thoughts she can’t quite fathom into words because they don’t translate to language.

She leans into Maggie’s side and thinks about her handwriting on that folded letter yesterday. Investigating Officer Pickles’s blueberry theft would have to wait another day. Today is for introspection; memorializing the other Alex and Maggie. They just need to iron out a plan.

“How would you wanna be honoured?” Maggie murmurs, leaning close so Jamie can’t overhear, thumbing the paper. 

"Well, you know I've been getting back into some old traditions," Alex says, adding, "And you too."

Maggie tucks some hair behind her ears self consciously, falling silent.

She’s thinking of that shooting on 17th and Schuster, Alex knows it. A few weeks ago, one of Maggie’s colleagues had been shot, a young rookie by the name of Ramirez. She’d been at the scene, had seen his body crumple to the ground. Maggie hadn’t attended Mass since the Christmas before that fateful Valentine’s Day when she was fourteen, but she’d found herself wandering from his hospital room to the chapel by the precinct. 

Alex picks at a chip in the brim of her coffee cup, then, "There is… one thing I'd like to do. What about you?"

Maggie bites her lip. "I don’t know…" She closes over the paper, watching Eliza move through the doorway into the living room. "You know, I think they were wiser than us."

“Oh, for sure.”

Ever since they first broke the ice, they’ve talked about the other Alex and Maggie. They seemed like they had everything figured out. They’d seen the destruction of their Earth coming and instead of panicking, they’d made a plan. They’d saved their daughter.

Maggie steals a piece of notepaper and a blue crayon, doodles mindlessly. “We can’t make it too obvious, with her…”

They both glance over to where Jamie swings her legs as she draws, completely oblivious to her parents’ conversation. Alex watches the careful strokes of her crayon, how she chooses the colour and switches if she doesn’t see it’s right. They often marvel at her creativity. To Jamie, a simple Amazon box could become anything: a spaceship, a fort, and even— with her Aunt Kara’s assistance— a dinosaur costume. 

Today though, she’s doodling something that resembles a butterfly. Or maybe a dragon?

A dragon which hunches back and snaps its jaws, flaps its wings and roars - she has an idea. 

After breakfast, they head to the craft store, purchasing stacks of colored paper and extra pairs of scissors and glue. Under the guise of an arts and crafts project, Maggie patiently shows Jamie how to make each cut and fold, turning the paper into a colorful lantern. 

They spend the whole afternoon making them, not stopping until both the entire kitchen table and bench are covered with a rainbow of paper crafts. Alex will happily tolerate her hectic job when she gets to spend a sunny afternoon with her kid making paper lanterns.

Later, she stands out in the dunes, watching the sun sink lower in the sky. Jamie is with Eliza at the house and Kara should be here to join her any minute—

With a soft _whoosh_ Kara flies over, dropping two volcanic rocks at the top of the dunes with a double-thud. She leans down, kisses each rock, and then prays in Kryptonian. Alex observes, her hands in her pockets, as Kara steps back and heat-visions symbols onto each of the rocks in turn. The fresh edges of the indent catch the sunset, facing into its dying rays.

“It’s what I think your names would translate to in Kryptonian,” she says, frowning in concentration like she isn’t sure she’s spelt them right. She reaches out a fingertip and cleans away some loose rock. 

Alex nods— the other Alex and Maggie won’t have headstones in their world, but maybe this will suffice— and they head back to the house together. 

As she and Eliza set up the yahrzeit candle, the red hues of the sunset filter in, filling the space with shadows once more. She thinks of her wife, currently on the other side of Midvale at the local chapel. There’s a Saturday night service for those who don’t make it on Sunday mornings, and while she didn’t join her, she can imagine from what Maggie has explained: the coloured light from the stained glass panels shimmering on her face as she kneels in reverence, the bread placed on her tongue, the taking of the wine from the brass goblet, the sacrament rich in taste. How her gentle touch reaches her forehead, chest, shoulders, in a cross. The quiet, unpractised Latin whispered under her breath. 

Alex turns back to her own duties. She’s left alone with the candle now, the flame flickering as it will for the next twenty-four hours. The shadows are dancing now, movement across the walls and ceiling. 

Outside, Eliza, Kara, and Jamie are playing out on the deck. She can hear their muffled glee. But she stays amongst the shadows, remembering.

~

She lights two votive candles and gives her thanks to the priest as she goes. 

Her hand flies up to block the light as she opens the heavy chapel doors. The sun is lowering in the sky, not quite gone, a reminder that she should soon be headed back. She sinks into the driver’s seat, letting the emotion of the day settle in her chest. The chapel is visible through the rear view mirror, and behind it, the brilliant blue ocean. 

She takes the letter from the glove compartment of the car, pulling it out of the envelope. She can’t put this off any longer.

_Maggie._

_I hope this finds you. If it does, it means she’s safe. I know this probably isn’t what you expected, and if you’re like me, maybe not what you wanted, and I’m sorry for that. If you decide this is a burden you can’t bear, all I ask is that you leave her with Alex and Kara Danvers, and if they aren’t in a position in your world to be her home, then please make sure she isn’t lost in the system on your Earth._

_But if you do take her in, there’s some things I want you to know. Our world is bleak, I won’t sugar coat it. Each day I kiss my wife and daughter goodbye with the knowledge that one day I might not come home. I’ve had close calls. I’ve been shot at and stabbed, but being a police officer is the only way I can make sure that the world is a little safer for her._

_Now that we’re all facing death, the days I spent away from them seem wasted. I wish I had more time._

_We’ve tried to shield her from the harsh realities of this Earth. She’s so young, so innocent, and she deserves to live a long, happy life._

_Alex was Jamie’s salvation. Instead of sticking her head in the sand in the face of death, she used her intelligence and dedication to find a way out for our daughter. Sometimes I’m blown away by her brilliance._

_I’m not afraid to die, not when Alex is by my side. She was my salvation, too._

_I don’t know how many of our experiences have been the same. I don’t know if we’ve dealt with the same pain, had the same good days or bad days. I don’t know if we’ve shared the triumphs or the losses. I don’t even know if you’re a cop. But I know you’ve got to have a good heart, and a good head on your shoulders._

_Maybe I’m asking an impossible task, but please, love my girl._

_All my hopes,_

_Another Maggie Sawyer._

She exhales, deflating back into the headrest. She remembers those early days, when she wasn’t sure if she could do this. Wasn’t sure she could be the mother that Jamie needed. Wasn’t sure if she even wanted to be a mother. 

She couldn’t imagine making another choice now. Jamie was hers. Her daughter. 

She offers one last prayer to the sun and the sea, then starts the car for home. Her heart swells with sorrow and gratitude. Jamie will have that happy life that the other Maggie and Alex died for. She would make sure of it.

Maggie comes home, shuffles her coat off, and joins Alex. 

She sees the single flame dancing in Alex’s eyes, in her face. 

“You read it,” Alex states, reading her.

Rather than answer, Maggie takes her hand and squeezes their knuckles together. They watch the candle’s mourning signal, commemorating the past. Then they turn away to face the future.

The kitchen table and counter are cluttered with at least two and a half dozen paper lanterns— each a different color, some a different shape. They take all the lanterns outside with Kara and Eliza’s help, but once the lanterns are laid across the sand on the beach, they leave the Sawyer-Danvers family to it. As Kara passes them on her way back to the house, Maggie catches her shoulder. 

“That’s really nice,” she says, thumbing up towards the dunes. The rocks are merely part of the dark shape of the dunes at night time, but she knows they’re there from the quick explanation she got from Alex as they set up the lanterns. 

Kara gives a wry smile, adjusting her glasses, and then moves on.

Jamie shifts back and forth, looking up at her moms. “Can I light them?” 

“Sorry, you gotta let mommy do this part,” Alex says. “Careful, here.” She strikes a match, lighting up the lantern and handing it to Jamie.“Let it go.”

It wobbles as it floats upwards, disappearing into the sky. Maggie smiles at the joy on Jamie’s face.

“You’re doing all the lighting,” she mumbles to Alex, “We don’t want to encourage a pyromaniac.”

“Our little arsonist.” Alex gently pats Jamie’s head.  “Ready to send up some more?”

They light them one by one at first, then Maggie steps in to start a second batch. The lanterns make a slow train upwards, speckling the night sky in blues, purples, reds, greens.

“They’re flying!” Jamie’s childish wonder is infectious as she helps the last lantern take flight.

Maggie pockets the matches and gazes up at the sky. “What a year.” 

Alex’s eyes glaze over. “Yeah, what a year.” 

“Do you think they’re watching over us, wherever they are?”

“Maybe.” Alex snakes an arm around Maggie’s waist, resting her head on her shoulder. “Do you?”

But Maggie isn’t listening. She’s staring up into the sky at the rising lights, at the spectrum of colour in each of the paths. They glimmer as her eyes fill with tears.

“Mom! Look at that one!” 

She sniffs and crouches down, following Jamie’s finger towards one lantern, spinning slowly as it rises higher than the rest.

She feels Alex’s hand on her shoulder, grounding her in this moment; Jamie’s excitement, the warm sand, the ocean spray. And when she stands, her wife whispers in her ear. “Wherever the other Maggie is, she’d be proud of you.”

She turns to Alex then, wrapping her arms loosely around her waist, the whisky hues of her eyes just visible from the lantern light. Those warm tones draw her in, just as they had that day in her apartment. The day she’d make a commitment to be there for the girl dancing in the dunes. The girl who shared those eyes. Their daughter. She remembers the distance that had stretched between them, the agony of Alex’s presence in the space she’d carved out for herself in the city. 

Now, as they stand together barefoot in the sand, Maggie has never felt more at ease. Those eyes no longer haunt her, a reminder of what she couldn’t have. 

All her life, she has been trying to forge a home. Trying to find something tangible and concrete on which to base her world and grow a family she would chose, in whatever shape she wanted. She always sought something solid, something real, something she could point to and say _this is my home_.

Even with Alex, Maggie knew the perils of trying to find that within someone, rather than something. 

But here, her search is over. She closes her eyes, lets the breeze lift her hair, lets the ocean command her senses. Jamie’s laughter peels between the rhythm of the waves. Her wife is there at her side, the ascending lanterns just flickering about her eyelids. 

Those lanterns rise into the night, all the time guiding her home. 

 

**_2024_ **

The heat is scorching. Sweat drips down her neck. She’s surrounded by screaming. 

Dread is a dead weight in her stomach. They’re running out of time.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she hisses under her breath, watching as the clock counts down. Beside her, her wife is tense, her fists balled at her sides, holding her breath—

The ball sails through the air and hits the back of the net. She springs up from her seat. 

Jamie scores!

On the field, their daughter dances around in celebration, scanning the sideline for them, her dimples prominent on reddened cheeks. She hops up and down when she spots them and they cheer and wave back because _yes, of course they saw!_

Play resumes and Jamie is in high spirits, but disaster strikes just after kickoff. Charlie passes Jamie the ball, just for one of the opposing players to slide into her. She tumbles onto the ground, her arm taking the brunt of the fall. 

The ref blows his whistle and Jamie’s coach hurries over to help her up. Alex stands along the sideline, not knowing whether to rush onto the field or hang back. It could be a bruise. Nothing to worry about. 

Jamie’s teammate Hailey trots over to the sideline. “Um, Mrs Danvers? Mrs Sawyer?” Her eyes dart between them as she twists her jersey between her fists. “I think Jamie’s hurt real bad.”

Alex looks at Maggie, then at Jamie’s coach checking out her arm. The team knows her as a doctor, and she has helped with some injuries before; if she’s being summoned, it must be worse than she’d hoped.

She jogs over and kneels down by Jamie on the field, surrounded by players from both teams. Jamie’s chin wobbles and her eyes are filling up, but even at ten years old, she’s so brave and stubborn. There’s so much of _both_ of them in her expression. So much determination. She won’t let the other players see her cry.

Jamie gets subbed off, but there’s only five minutes left. She sits between Alex and Maggie in her dirty jersey, swinging her cleats and cradling her arm as she watches her team carry on without her. 

She looks up at Alex, eyes still glassy. “Mom, I still wanna go get pizza.”

“I know, sweetie,” Alex says, “But your arm-”

“But you promised!” A pout begins to form. “I scored and everything.”

Maggie is no nonsense. “Your arm, baby. It could be real bad.” 

“It’s not even that b-” She swings her arm, and then hisses when the pain shocks through the entire limb. She lets out a whine, cradling her arm to her chest, and yeah— she’s their kid alright. 

Maggie and Alex share a look. Alex loves how Maggie has developed hers over time, over these five years as a mother. 

By now the game has ended and a gaggle of expectant kids in matching jerseys lingers back. It’s clear they’re all interested in whether there will be pizza as well, but they’re too polite to speak up. 

Cindy, another mom who had been helping them organize the pizza trip, makes her way through the gathered crowd. She pushes her oversized sunglasses up onto her bleached bob. “Hi, Alex. Is Jamie okay? I saw her get hurt.”

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Alex confirms, “Just hurt her arm, right?”

“Not that bad.” Jamie pouts. 

“We can postpone the pizza until next week,” Cindy offers. 

Maggie shakes her head and thumbs at the group of kids behind them. “You wanna be the one to tell those faces no pizza?”

Cindy and Maggie smile as Alex hunches down with Jamie. “I’ll make you a deal,” she says. “You let me fix your arm up in the car with a sling, and come with me to work later so I can get you an x-ray…” She draws it out for dramatic effect. “And we can go for pizza now.”

Jamie beams, throwing her good arm around her mother for a hug. “Deal!”

Alex lifts her index finger in warning. “No taking your sling off when I’m not looking.”

Rolling her eyes at the stern look, Jamie hops off the bench and takes off to tell her teammates the good news. 

“Mini Alex Danvers.” Maggie leans down and kisses Alex on the temple. “More like you every day.”

“Yeah, soccer mom Sawyer,” Alex teases.

They follow their daughter to the car, hand in hand. 

Later, when they’re all gathered at Pizza Port, Jamie and her makeshift cast and sling are the center of attention— the pain quickly forgotten amidst the praise.

“Your goal was so good!” 

“Yeah, wow!”

Alex squints at the glare from the sun filling the restaurant, watching Jamie grin around her straw. The heatwave has made for a string of good days out for them, and while she’s concerned about her daughter’s arm, she thinks the pride in Jamie’s voice as she retells the story of her goal for the sixth time might make it worth it. 

Later, with Jamie’s arm in a proper cast, Kara joins them that evening for family movie night and she gets to tell the whole story over again. She gestures through the air with her casted arm, the details getting wilder with each retelling. She grins, her front tooth missing, and Alex marvels at how she’s grown. 

Five years certainly had flown by. 

The child she’d found in the pod clutching onto a stuffed otter is now ten years old. Their soccer star, spending her Saturday afternoons now tearing up and down the pitch in Belmont Park that had once been marred with a gaping crater.

She’s too old to bring Officer Pickles along with her everywhere, but just this morning Alex caught her talking to him on her dresser. She paced back and forth, rolling up her white socks, tying her hair back in a tight ponytail, telling him about the opposition from the other school, psyching herself up to score for the game.

Alex takes Jamie’s discarded soccer cleats and heads upstairs to put them away. It’s only when she turns to flick off the light that she sees it. Officer Pickles is still perched in his place of honor on the dresser, but he’s been given a makeshift cast out of paper towels. She reaches out to rub at his velveted ears, the material worn from love. 

“Five years,” she says, snorting as she realises she expects him to answer.

When she returns back to the living room, Pickles tucked under her arm, the rest of her family is settled under blankets on the couch. 

“Pickles wanted to see the movie too.” She holds the stuffed toy out, waving him around like she has seen Jamie do numerous times over the years.

Jamie shovels popcorn into her mouth with her good hand. “Careful! He has a broken paw, you know?”

She’s old enough to be in on the joke, but she still wipes the salt and butter onto her pants and reaches out to take him from her mother. 

Alex takes a seat on Jamie’s other side and the girl cuddles up between her parents, Pickles in her arms. 

Belmont Park, now somewhere she attends so often she forgets that day with a red alert and a crowded area of civilians. She watches Jamie dart through the white lines, forgetting the silver pod in long-term DEO storage. She bounces up from the wooden benches, not thinking of sliding down the loose dirt into the crater. She hands out fresh cut oranges in the dug out, the sleeping girl with no home far from her mind.   

She gets a nudge on her elbow, bringing her back to her living room, where the attention of the room is fixed on her.

“Earth to Danvers,” Maggie says, “You back with us?”

“Agent Danvers,” Kara adds, pretending to speak into a radio, “Have you arrived back on Earth?”

She’s home, physically yes. She knows each of these items, where they bought them, how they move for family gatherings. She dusts and cleans those shelves, tends to Maggie or Jamie when they’re sick on this couch, shouts at that TV on the wall. This is her house, her living room, that she has assembled bit by bit with those in this room. 

But these people; her sister, her wife, her child. They’re her home. 

She throws an arm around Jamie, tapping Maggie’s shoulder. She relaxes, content.  

“Pickles says stop dreaming,” Jamie goads, grinning.

But it began with a dream, she remembers. Before the sunny park, before the tests in the DEO, before the videos, before telling Maggie, it had been a dream. That other Alex and Maggie, that premonition. A warning of the danger. 

“Don’t be cynical,” she says, picking up the remote to press play on the movie, “A dream can come true, once in a while.”

She worries about the future, as they all do. She watches weather reports like a hawk, keeping the channel with NASA open to make sure no data is being missed, just in case. She isn’t sure how much time they could have if things do take a turn for the worst. 

The fear is always there, lurking in the background, no matter what she tells herself. 

~

But 2024 turns to 2025. 

Alex kisses Maggie at midnight on New Years’ like it’s that first time in the bar; desperate, wanting, relieved. 

Later, they celebrate six years of marriage. Jamie scores three more goals that season than the previous. Maggie takes her Sergeant exam, Alex breaks her ankle and finds that time may heal all wounds eventually, but being parked for constant reruns of Jamie’s favourite show definitely slows the process. 

And they continue to send up lanterns every year in tradition. 

And as for Pickles? 

After two years with a sweet Ceptumite named Tom, Kara has a baby boy. They name him Evan, ( _Van-El,_ Kara haughtily reminds them). Jamie smiles down at him with his bunched fists and blonde hair, and then scrunches her nose up at his continous squirming.

“You’re too small to come play with me yet,” she says, “But I have a friend who wants to meet you.”

She takes the decision very seriously but decides to gift her newborn cousin with his first companion. 

“You aren’t getting him forever,” Jamie warns, gingerly setting the otter in the crib, “But you can borrow him for a little while, anyway.”

She steps away and trots over to Alex, leaning in the nursery doorway. “Are you sure you wanna give up Pickles?” she asks. She knows Jamie is eleven now, but they’d always been attached at the hip. 

Jamie shrugs. “Evan needs him more than me.” She glances back, like she might change her mind and dart back for him, but shakes her head. “Besides, I promised to be the best big cousin, but I can’t watch him all the time, so Pickles can watch him for me when I’m not here.”

Just like that, Jamie binds herself into a covenant. When Alex is left alone in the nursery, she smiles down at her sleeping nephew and Pickles. 

“You better look after him,” she warns the toy, “Jamie told you so.”

She plays with his velvety ears. He is testament to all of them fulfilling their promises, or being determined to. This seems fitting, to pass him along again. 

It started with a dream, one she hopes will never end. She recalls that night on the couch after Jamie hurt her arm, when she was lost in her thoughts about Belmont Park.

Maggie and Jamie are singing along to something in the kitchen, Kara and Tom laughing in response, and she feels complete. 

“Yeah, a dream can come true.”

~

 **Covenant** \- [ **kuhv** - _uh_ -n _uh_ nt] _noun:_

an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you all so much x

**Author's Note:**

> Officer Pickles returns! Let us know what you thought of it!


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